Speaker 1: Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind. My name
Speaker 1: is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick, and it's Saturday.
Speaker 1: Time to go into the vault for an older episode
Speaker 1: of the show. Today it is the Star Wars Alien
Speaker 1: Necropsy Part two, originally published May six. We hope you
Speaker 1: enjoy This facility is a mess, totally not up to
Speaker 1: Imperial standards. He says that it's due to his haste.
Speaker 1: He could perform tidier necropsies of the alien species requested,
Speaker 1: but it would require more time. Lord Veda has absolutely
Speaker 1: forbidden a third episode. The analysis needs to be completed today.
Speaker 1: The surgical droid is requesting that we each hold a
Speaker 1: flap of tissue. I am just here to supervise. Doesn't
Speaker 1: he have extra arms for precisely this reason? Those are
Speaker 1: for waving around all right? Then? My welcome to stot
Speaker 1: to Blow Your Mind, a production of My Heart Radio. Hey,
Speaker 1: welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind. My name is
Speaker 1: Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick, and we're back with
Speaker 1: part two of our Star Wars Alien Necropsys. Uh So
Speaker 1: in the last episode. If you haven't heard that, yeah,
Speaker 1: you should probably just go listen to that one first
Speaker 1: where we discuss what we're doing here and then and
Speaker 1: then come back and rejoin us for this one. But hey,
Speaker 1: if if you're all caught up here, we are again.
Speaker 1: And the last time we talked about some aliens from
Speaker 1: the Star Wars galaxy. We talked about some vacuum dwellers
Speaker 1: like the Exo Gorth and the myn Ox and compared
Speaker 1: that to some real world biology, both both definite and hypothetical.
Speaker 1: And we also talked about the Jedi toe Gruda, a
Speaker 1: powerful and honorable species of alien with some with awesome
Speaker 1: stuff on their heads. But but we're back again, and
Speaker 1: I think it's heads up first again today, isn't it?
Speaker 1: It is? And I'm glad as you mentioned the Togruto
Speaker 1: because because basically it comes down to this situation where
Speaker 1: you have various scenes in Star Wars Cantina scenes, Jedi
Speaker 1: Council scenes, etcetera, where part of the fund is like, wow,
Speaker 1: look at the alien diversity and look at all the
Speaker 1: strange things going on with with morphology, with with these
Speaker 1: aliens heads and bodies. But of course, if we're looking
Speaker 1: at things from a biological standpoint, things are shaped certain
Speaker 1: ways for a reason. Things have evolved into different forms
Speaker 1: for a reason. And those strange heads you see just
Speaker 1: filling up the space. If we were, if we were
Speaker 1: to look at them with scientific scrutiny, and you know,
Speaker 1: and also lean into the uh, you know two, into
Speaker 1: the imagination, into the fantasy of that. You know, all
Speaker 1: these things have a purpose, and and we can we
Speaker 1: can turn, of course, to to Cannon and to the
Speaker 1: fiction itself to get some of those answers. But then
Speaker 1: a lot of the fun is an extrapolating and saying
Speaker 1: what else could it be used for? Or if the
Speaker 1: thing they're telling me is true, what are the ramifications,
Speaker 1: often the unexplored ramifications of that right? What can you
Speaker 1: deduce about the ancestral environment of the creature that confronts
Speaker 1: Luke in the moss ize lye cantina with the weird
Speaker 1: little lobes on his chin. I actually know the answer
Speaker 1: to that one. I think that was that one has
Speaker 1: been described in Cannon. I think it's cannon anyway as
Speaker 1: being um like a a surgical It's like a self
Speaker 1: surgical addict. So that so all those weird features are
Speaker 1: at least partially the result of self surgery. I think
Speaker 1: that's right. Could be wrong on that. We might have
Speaker 1: to take that out if I'm wrong, but but I
Speaker 1: believe that's the case. That is not the answer I expect. Wait,
Speaker 1: are you talking about the guy who talks to Luke
Speaker 1: or just the guy who grunt? No, I meant the
Speaker 1: guy who grunts at him, who has the weird little
Speaker 1: kind of like the butt on his mouth or chin area. Yes, um,
Speaker 1: I don't know as much about those guys, but but
Speaker 1: they are. They are described at length in some of
Speaker 1: the books that, uh, that I've looked at. One of
Speaker 1: which I want to go ahead and mention is Star
Speaker 1: Wars Alien Archive, which is just a wonderful illustrated tone
Speaker 1: of Aliens from all I think, all the Star Wars
Speaker 1: movies up through Solo, and it had just wonderful illustrations,
Speaker 1: nice little rite ups about them. It's one of these
Speaker 1: books that, um, that I got from my my son
Speaker 1: sometime last year early last year, and we've already like
Speaker 1: worn it out, their pages falling out of it. You know,
Speaker 1: anytime you get the book out, you have to like
Speaker 1: reinsert different parts of it that have come come apart.
Speaker 1: It's a it's seen a lot of a lot of
Speaker 1: wear and tear and love, so I highly recommend that one. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I think we've talked too many times before about our
Speaker 1: our love for the illustrated encyclopedias of fictional worlds, and
Speaker 1: and this is a great one. But the the first
Speaker 1: selection I want to make here today is Um is
Speaker 1: not a creature from a cantina. It is that, in fact,
Speaker 1: a creature from UH that we first encounter in the
Speaker 1: Jedi Council scenes in UH Star Wars The Phantom Menace. Now,
Speaker 1: I don't know if you remember these these guys are
Speaker 1: not are really there's mainly one that we encounter, but
Speaker 1: the species they're known as the Serians. Oh, this is
Speaker 1: the guy who looks like a wizard but with a
Speaker 1: tower head. So it's almost as if the Tower of
Speaker 1: Eisngard has been incorporated into Sorrowman's skull. Yes, these uh
Speaker 1: these were a bipedal largely humanoid species were told their
Speaker 1: native to the planet Syria, and they're most notable for
Speaker 1: their enlarged, vaguely conical craniums, though they lack the pronounced
Speaker 1: cone heads of the Remulachians of cone Head's fame. Um
Speaker 1: we're told that they have two hearts, the second of
Speaker 1: which is said to supply extra blood and oxygen to
Speaker 1: their most curious uh neurobiology. And that is a binary brain.
Speaker 1: Oh okay, I can see why this caught your attention. Yes,
Speaker 1: So what is meant by a binary brain? Well? In
Speaker 1: uh again the excellent illustrated Star Wars Alien Archive, it
Speaker 1: is said that the Syrian binary brain is quote able
Speaker 1: to process many things the same time, sort through data quickly,
Speaker 1: and also consider two sides of the same arguments simultaneously
Speaker 1: parallel processing. Yeah, and it's also been suggested I think
Speaker 1: in perhaps this is like an extended universe, you know,
Speaker 1: novelization thing. But it's been suggested that this sort of
Speaker 1: brain structure allows at least certain members of of of
Speaker 1: the Syrian species, especially like four sensitive individuals, to explore
Speaker 1: both the light and the dark side of the force
Speaker 1: in ways that are maybe somewhat safer compared to just
Speaker 1: normal dabbling in the dark side. Oh. I see. So
Speaker 1: the understanding is that normally, if you are to explore
Speaker 1: the dark side, it's kind of not possible to just
Speaker 1: do that as a curiosity like learning the dark side
Speaker 1: necessarily will corrupt and contaminate your brain. And so if
Speaker 1: you have a divided mind like this, maybe you can
Speaker 1: sort of quarantine the half of your brain that does
Speaker 1: get corrupted with that so that it doesn't spread to
Speaker 1: the other half. Is that what you're saying? That is what?
Speaker 1: That is what I've leaeve The argument is I haven't
Speaker 1: actually read anything um or viewed anything where they get
Speaker 1: into that, but certainly if anyone out there has, if
Speaker 1: you're familiar with with whatever novelization or or novel or
Speaker 1: comic this happens to be from, I'd love to hear
Speaker 1: a little bit more. Now. The most famous and recognizable
Speaker 1: Serian is, without a doubt, Jedi Master Kai Adimundi, hero
Speaker 1: general of the Clone Wars who fought alongside the likes
Speaker 1: of Anakin, Skywalker and Obi Wan Kenobi. He fought at
Speaker 1: the first and second battles of Genosis and perished during
Speaker 1: the invasion of the Ghetto with the twenty one Novocore
Speaker 1: when Supreme Chancellor Palpatine initiated Order sixty six. He's skilled
Speaker 1: with a lightsaber. He was a skilled force combatant, but
Speaker 1: he was equally known and respected for his logic and
Speaker 1: tactics that big brain of his Yeah, that would make sense.
Speaker 1: I seem to recall his death scene. I think it's
Speaker 1: in Revenge of the Sith. He's like running across a
Speaker 1: is it across a bridge or something? Yeah, I think
Speaker 1: it's a bridge battle and all the Clone Troopers start
Speaker 1: shooting him in the back. Yeah. Yeah, so so he
Speaker 1: track definitely goes down. But so you don't see a
Speaker 1: lot of him in the live action stuff, but um
Speaker 1: and in those prequel films, he was played by an
Speaker 1: actor by the name of Silas Carson under heavy um
Speaker 1: effects makeup. But in the Clone Wars animated series, the
Speaker 1: main one, he was voiced by British Israeli actor Brian George,
Speaker 1: who does a great job with him, and they have
Speaker 1: a little more time to flesh him out. And in
Speaker 1: the two thousand three Clone Wars series from Ghindi Tartakowski,
Speaker 1: you don't have um, you don't really have a lot
Speaker 1: of character development there, but you have a lot of action.
Speaker 1: That's a very action centric series. And in that um
Speaker 1: Master Mundi is an absolute shirt ripping beast, Like he's
Speaker 1: running around with head bandaged and his shirt torn open,
Speaker 1: with all these muscles and he's just like you know,
Speaker 1: killing the thousands of droids. It's it's pretty fun. So
Speaker 1: he's like your Hunter from the Future mode. Yeah, just slaying.
Speaker 1: But you know, okay, it's impressive that he can do
Speaker 1: stuff with the lightsaber and then he can go into
Speaker 1: beast mode. But the main thing we're gonna talk about
Speaker 1: here is this idea of a binary brain. And as
Speaker 1: far as I know, there's no definitive word on the
Speaker 1: exact structure of the Syrian brain or brains, but I
Speaker 1: think there are essentially a couple of ways to look
Speaker 1: at what might be going on inside that skull of theirs. Okay,
Speaker 1: let's let's hear it. What's the first option? Okay, first
Speaker 1: option would be just, of course, a supersized brain that
Speaker 1: enables this binary mental process, composed of two lobes like ours,
Speaker 1: or maybe more lobes. I don't know, you know, when
Speaker 1: you're getting into an unknown alien brain, who's to say, right,
Speaker 1: And Syrian brain evolution could certainly follow the ice cream
Speaker 1: scoop model of human brain evolution. I think we've discussed
Speaker 1: this in the show before. But as explained by Kyle
Speaker 1: Moon Kittrick in a two thousand ten Discover Magazine article,
Speaker 1: quote evolution built our brain by taking simpler brains and
Speaker 1: just piling more brains on top, like adding scoops of
Speaker 1: ice cream to an ice cream cone. Yeah. I think
Speaker 1: that's a good way of thinking about it. I mean, obviously,
Speaker 1: we always want to be careful not to oversimplify the
Speaker 1: way we think about the structures of the brain, because
Speaker 1: brains are complex and and all that, But in rough terms,
Speaker 1: I think that is sort of true. Like at the
Speaker 1: lower levels of the brain you have um the more
Speaker 1: sort of automatic processes of the body, and the more
Speaker 1: base level things like emotional type reactions. And then when
Speaker 1: you get further and further into the younger parts of
Speaker 1: the brain, younger in an evolutionary sense, towards the top
Speaker 1: and front of the brain, you get these you know,
Speaker 1: these core texes, which are very involved in executive function
Speaker 1: and a lot of the things we think of as
Speaker 1: higher level thinking and behavior. Yeah, Son Gentric describes like
Speaker 1: the first the first layer is actually the cone, and
Speaker 1: that's the nervous jellyfish cone. And then you get your
Speaker 1: instinctive lizard scoop pile on top of that, then the
Speaker 1: memory mouse scoop, then the thinking, the thinking ape scoop
Speaker 1: on top of that. So each layer brings with it
Speaker 1: great pros that enable the human brain to funct and evolved,
Speaker 1: but also arguably certain cons. And that's one of the
Speaker 1: things they get into in this article. But for our purposes, yeah,
Speaker 1: I think you could look at these arian the brain
Speaker 1: as essentially a human level brain with additional scoops cowering
Speaker 1: atop the rest of the cone, enabling this vastly increased functionality.
Speaker 1: Now you might think, well, what would the cons of
Speaker 1: having higher brain function be? And I would just say, like,
Speaker 1: I'm not aware of any reptiles that really get bogged
Speaker 1: down in rumination. Yeah, yeah, um, and I and I
Speaker 1: really hope certainly a Jedi master wouldn't have Like a
Speaker 1: Jedi masters have to deal with the dark side too.
Speaker 1: I mean that's kind of the thing, right, Like higher
Speaker 1: cognition means you're open to the dark set. Correct me
Speaker 1: if I'm wrong. But I seem to recall in the
Speaker 1: prequels that a lot of Jedi training is about purging emotions,
Speaker 1: or at least certain kinds of emotions, maybe not to
Speaker 1: the full Spock extent, but at least like not letting
Speaker 1: impulsive emotional reactions guide you're thinking to be clear and
Speaker 1: to be you know, to to be able to use
Speaker 1: was clear thinking in your mind when when our our
Speaker 1: natural tendency would be to get hot headed, right uh. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And then there's a lot of Buddhist uh uh Buddhism
Speaker 1: in there as well, dealing with like the idea of
Speaker 1: avoiding attachments and all. So we see that doesn't necessarily
Speaker 1: work out all that well for those who aspire to it,
Speaker 1: right in those films. But but even like in terms
Speaker 1: of like confronting the dark side though, like that's always
Speaker 1: been a part of the uh of the of the
Speaker 1: Star Wars world, I mean, back the Empire. When Luke
Speaker 1: goes into that swamp and he's completing his training, like
Speaker 1: one of the things he does is the encounters that
Speaker 1: that vision of of Darth Vader that is also a
Speaker 1: vision of himself, right, I mean, I think we're supposed
Speaker 1: to take that as like Luke is being confronted by
Speaker 1: the possibility of what would happen if he himself were
Speaker 1: seduced by the dark Side, which of course he does.
Speaker 1: He does play pretty dangerous in the movies, right, he
Speaker 1: gets close. Yeah. Yeah, anyway, that's Basically, this is like
Speaker 1: one idea of looking at this big just one big
Speaker 1: brain in there, so it's like built up level by level,
Speaker 1: and maybe the additional brains are are something like what
Speaker 1: you would put even on top of our neo cortex.
Speaker 1: Maybe like they've got like a neo neo cortex or something. Yeah,
Speaker 1: now another interpretation, and I think a more exotic one
Speaker 1: and also maybe maybe more fun, maybe more sci fi fantasy,
Speaker 1: but also one that I think I've seen visually represented somewhere.
Speaker 1: I tried to hunt it down to see if I
Speaker 1: get because I would have put it in our inside
Speaker 1: of our notes if I could, but I couldn't find it.
Speaker 1: But I think I've seen this represented visibly. And that
Speaker 1: is the idea that Serian's actually have two brains inside
Speaker 1: their skull, one positioned right on top of the other,
Speaker 1: just straight up two brains inside their heads. So that
Speaker 1: means one of the brains is closer to the heart.
Speaker 1: Maybe that makes it easier to get blood flow to
Speaker 1: that one. Well, that's why they have two hearts, Joe.
Speaker 1: So the idea is that that second heart is I
Speaker 1: guess powering the second brain or enabling just enough blood
Speaker 1: flow to get up there to to work with both brains. Um.
Speaker 1: So I want to stress I'm not talking two brains
Speaker 1: here in the sense that the human brain consists of
Speaker 1: two hemispheres connected by the corpus colalsum, but two separate brains,
Speaker 1: perhaps each consisting of two hemispheres each. And uh, I
Speaker 1: should also add that that some descriptions refer to Syrian
Speaker 1: brains in a way that does seem to indicate two brains.
Speaker 1: And again, they do have two hard so I guess
Speaker 1: the duplicity seems to to work out here. So of
Speaker 1: these two I tend to lean more towards the actual
Speaker 1: two brains inside their their heads. Uh. So, I guess
Speaker 1: another you could do a third option that would be
Speaker 1: a variation on idea number two, and that would be
Speaker 1: that they just have a very large humanoid brain, but
Speaker 1: the hemispheres are not connected by something like the corpus colossum.
Speaker 1: Oh no, that's very interesting. I want to say some things,
Speaker 1: but I also don't want to preempt you because I
Speaker 1: know you're going to get into talking about split brain
Speaker 1: experiments here. Oh yeah, okay, but yeah, so the corpus colosum,
Speaker 1: at least we know in the human brain enables a
Speaker 1: large amount of community cation between the hemispheres, and in
Speaker 1: cases where the corpus colossum in humans has been severed,
Speaker 1: often a person can still live their life, like you
Speaker 1: can function with your brain hemispheres severed, and you can
Speaker 1: do things, but there are some very noticeable changes to
Speaker 1: how the brain or brains react to certain types of
Speaker 1: stimuli and scenarios under that condition. Yeah, yeah, when the
Speaker 1: colossum has been severed. And then when you have like
Speaker 1: often it's you have to have certain experimental scenarios in
Speaker 1: place to make it become obvious because otherwise the individual
Speaker 1: doesn't notice and people who know them probably don't notice.
Speaker 1: But but we'll get out into all that in a second. Now,
Speaker 1: there are a lot of different directions you could go
Speaker 1: in here, like why, I mean, the big one is
Speaker 1: like why would they go in this direction? First of all,
Speaker 1: would it be natural? Would it be just an evolution
Speaker 1: or would it be something that was engineered? And in
Speaker 1: either case, like why would it have to do with uh,
Speaker 1: like higher why would they need this? Like higher cognitive
Speaker 1: state would have something to do with, you know, being
Speaker 1: an interstellar species, or something to do with their their
Speaker 1: home environment. I don't know. Well, I mean it makes
Speaker 1: me think about how there are species on Earth that
Speaker 1: have a more distributed model of intelligence and nervous system control.
Speaker 1: And a great example would be octopuses, you know, like
Speaker 1: the octopus of course, like they've got a central brain,
Speaker 1: but then they have ganglia throughout the body that are
Speaker 1: sometimes written about, and you could argue to what extent
Speaker 1: this is a fair characterization, but they you could argue
Speaker 1: that octopuses in some ways also think with their arms
Speaker 1: in ways that are independent of the thinking that takes
Speaker 1: place in the centralized brain. So you can imagine there
Speaker 1: are scenarios where it's useful for an animal to have
Speaker 1: thinking or information processing happening at multiple different places within
Speaker 1: the body. But the Syrian seems kind of different because
Speaker 1: you can imagine with the octopus, Okay, maybe somehow the
Speaker 1: arm needs to think independently of the central brain, but
Speaker 1: this is too central role brains, two brains in the head,
Speaker 1: So what's the what's like the second one doing differently?
Speaker 1: How would that be distributed in a way that would
Speaker 1: be useful like the octopus's arm. Yeah, and and so
Speaker 1: in thinking about possibilities, and you know, we also come
Speaker 1: into ideas of that, like a philosophical or spiritual upgrades
Speaker 1: to the brain. I mean, why not if we're trying
Speaker 1: to determine where we go from here. I mean, it
Speaker 1: seems like that's worth thinking about. I should also just
Speaker 1: go ahead and add that obviously, big headed aliens is
Speaker 1: just a long, a longstanding trope, you know, going back
Speaker 1: to the outer limits and so forth. So, uh, it's
Speaker 1: not like they invented the idea of big headed aliens
Speaker 1: and big headed future humanoids. It's been pretty much standard. Um.
Speaker 1: But but I don't know that I have I'm sure
Speaker 1: there's some sci fi out there predating this in which
Speaker 1: a human had to brain or humanoid had two brains,
Speaker 1: aside from Steve Martin, but yeah, but I'm not I'm
Speaker 1: not aware of it off the top of my head.
Speaker 1: But but a lot of these considerations, like when we're
Speaker 1: talking about what, you know, what does this mean? What
Speaker 1: would two brains be like? I mean, it basically comes
Speaker 1: down to to that, what would it be like to
Speaker 1: have two brains? What would it conceive? What would conceivably
Speaker 1: be the mental state of an individual like Master Moondy
Speaker 1: here with two brains in their head? Ah? So now,
Speaker 1: you're getting into subjective experience. And this of course touches
Speaker 1: on really big questions that are still unsettled in in
Speaker 1: in human science and philosophy, stuff about like where consciousness
Speaker 1: resides and what it consists of. Yeah, yeah, and ultimately, yeah,
Speaker 1: this is going to be unanswerable and we just have
Speaker 1: to sort of speculate and have fun with the speculation.
Speaker 1: But on one level, you have to say that, ultimately
Speaker 1: the mind of alien being might just be impossible for
Speaker 1: us to comprehend. It just might be that different. On
Speaker 1: the other hand, you could say, well, having two brains
Speaker 1: in your head like this, it would just be like
Speaker 1: our mental experience. Because, as we alluded to earlier, the
Speaker 1: human brain consists of two cerebral hemispheres connected by the
Speaker 1: corpus um closum, each with many different modules, all of
Speaker 1: these acting and consert with each other, interconnected, and we
Speaker 1: explored this at length in our episodes on split brain
Speaker 1: experiments UM and and of those experiments, most interestingly, one
Speaker 1: of the big takems was if is that indeed, if
Speaker 1: you split the brain, you essentially split the person as well. Um,
Speaker 1: we're talking one person per hemisphere of the brain, a
Speaker 1: division of self not one that is obvious to the
Speaker 1: individual or too people around them, but again presents itself
Speaker 1: when revealed through various experiments, particularly the Nobel winning work
Speaker 1: of neuroscientists Roger Sperry and Michael Gazanaga in the sixties
Speaker 1: and seventies. And so we go into much more depth
Speaker 1: than in that pair of episodes from I think it
Speaker 1: was a couple of years ago now, so you can
Speaker 1: go look those up if you want the full scoop.
Speaker 1: But they did find some very interesting things that I
Speaker 1: will say, Um, we also talked in that episode, I
Speaker 1: think about how there has been some research in recent
Speaker 1: years that sort of challenge their original findings, but people
Speaker 1: have pushed back against that research too, so it seems like,
Speaker 1: you know, this is one of the many things in
Speaker 1: in psychology and neuroscience that's still an ongoing question. But
Speaker 1: at least what they appeared to find is that you can,
Speaker 1: for example, in a patient who has had their hemisphere
Speaker 1: severed through this radical UH severing of the corpus closum,
Speaker 1: which is done not for the purpose of the experiment,
Speaker 1: but it's done specifically for people with really UH treatment
Speaker 1: resistant epilepsy to prevent them from having these recurring terrible seizures.
Speaker 1: Uh that you can sever the corpus closum, a person
Speaker 1: still reports being able to live their life generally like,
Speaker 1: it is not a debilitating thing to do to the brain,
Speaker 1: but it causes these strange things where, for example, it
Speaker 1: seems that some amount of information is prevented from being
Speaker 1: shared fully between the two different parts of the brain.
Speaker 1: And so, for example, it is widely uh that in
Speaker 1: in most brains, it is the left hemisphere that seems
Speaker 1: to do the talking, like the language interactions with the
Speaker 1: outside world. And so you can present stimuli that are
Speaker 1: only within the sensory awareness of the right hemisphere of
Speaker 1: the brain, say by presenting it in a certain part
Speaker 1: of the visual field. And so the parts of the
Speaker 1: body controlled primarily by the right hemisphere of the brain
Speaker 1: can do things that seem to reflect knowledge of the
Speaker 1: stimulus that you have showed that hemisphere of the brain,
Speaker 1: but the person can't talk about that knowledge. They don't
Speaker 1: seem to have linguistic awareness of it, which is extremely weird. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And and at times it kind of comes off as
Speaker 1: a sort of subtle duality of self. Some of the
Speaker 1: most interesting ideas that come come out of it because
Speaker 1: Anaga wraps up in his interpreter theory, which which again
Speaker 1: we've discussed on the show, in which the the left
Speaker 1: brain hemisphere contains some function that he calls the interpreter,
Speaker 1: which creates a sense of self, even if it is
Speaker 1: a completely false sense by coming up with a post
Speaker 1: talk explanation for behaviors. Yeah, that that there's this function
Speaker 1: that's largely seated within the left hemisphere that sort of
Speaker 1: tells the narrative story to your own brain, that explains
Speaker 1: why you're doing what you're doing. It creates that moment
Speaker 1: to moment stream of consciousness that helps you understand your
Speaker 1: own behavior, even though it seems a lot of your
Speaker 1: own behavior is caused by things that are not actually
Speaker 1: within your awareness. It doesn't, it doesn't. It's not downstream
Speaker 1: from your consciousness, but upstream from your consciousness. Now I
Speaker 1: should also throw in that in there. They did experiment
Speaker 1: with animals as well, and um, you know there are
Speaker 1: limitations when you're looking at animal brains and you know,
Speaker 1: trying to compare it to human brains. But but they
Speaker 1: found that if they produced a split brain in some
Speaker 1: of these animals. Uh. First of all, of course, each
Speaker 1: side seemed to function independently the other, but also that
Speaker 1: an animal with a split brain could memorize double the information.
Speaker 1: Uh So that basic idea again, we could at least
Speaker 1: when talking about Star Wars, we could extrapolate to say, well,
Speaker 1: maybe if you did have two independent brains in your head, yeah,
Speaker 1: maybe you could process and contain double the information. So
Speaker 1: that's really interesting. But I'm also really interested in this
Speaker 1: idea of exploring both sides of the force with the
Speaker 1: brain like this that you mentioned earlier. Yeah. Yeah, So
Speaker 1: with that in mind, let's consider a couple of take comes.
Speaker 1: And again we're kind of cherry picking here, but a
Speaker 1: couple of take comes from the split brain research that
Speaker 1: Kazanga put forth. First of all, the interpreter function of
Speaker 1: the left brain makes it more makes it more likely
Speaker 1: to distort recall of events, and that the non interpreting,
Speaker 1: non explaining right brain has a more accurate recall function.
Speaker 1: So it's not telling itself a story to post talk
Speaker 1: rationalize whatever is, it's experiencing. It's logging information in a
Speaker 1: more objective sense. Yeah, like one side is telling a story,
Speaker 1: crafting a story, and retelling a story. On the other
Speaker 1: side is is recalling events, saying what happened. Also, the
Speaker 1: left and right hemispheres have different problem solving approaches. The
Speaker 1: right hemisphere bases its judgments on simple frequency information, while
Speaker 1: the left relies on the formation of elaborate HYPOTHESI sees.
Speaker 1: So that this makes me wonder like which side would
Speaker 1: lean dark side? Because you know that the left is
Speaker 1: again partial to distorted recall, the very sort of distortion
Speaker 1: that we see in the fall of say Anakin Skywalker,
Speaker 1: but it also relies on uh, you know, those the
Speaker 1: idea of elaborate hypotheses, which again matches up with some
Speaker 1: of some of Skywalker's inner torment or or you know,
Speaker 1: as well as the expressed worldview of of his master
Speaker 1: dark city a simper of Palpatine, right, uh and and
Speaker 1: perhaps the light you know, the right side of the force,
Speaker 1: the side of the brain here is more about simple
Speaker 1: frequency information and accurate recall. So instead of the distorted
Speaker 1: worldview like this is the world as it is, like
Speaker 1: a more logical approach to reality. So if there is
Speaker 1: anything to interpreter theory, it seems to me pretty clear
Speaker 1: that it would be the left side that's the dark side, right,
Speaker 1: because what's the Dark Side. Do the Dark Side you
Speaker 1: tell a story in which your actions are justified because
Speaker 1: of some reason. Right, well, I had to do it
Speaker 1: because I had to save pad May, right right where
Speaker 1: the logical side is like, no, you're just like strayed
Speaker 1: up killing people. Uh. But then again, you know, what
Speaker 1: would darth Citius say to all this? What would would
Speaker 1: Palpatine say? And I think he might well argue that
Speaker 1: it's only through mental gymnastics that we arrive at the
Speaker 1: Jedi way, that the Jedi exists because they're telling this themselves,
Speaker 1: the story and over and over again. They're creating their
Speaker 1: own mythology to rationalize their tyranny, and that the dark
Speaker 1: Side is just the shortest logical path, like that Cidius
Speaker 1: is the same man in the universe that has been
Speaker 1: deluded by this um, this ancient religion. Darth Citius makes
Speaker 1: a good point. You know, I think it would work better. Actually, though,
Speaker 1: if Darth said if the Sith Lords were not always
Speaker 1: saying like, yes, we are the dark Side, we we
Speaker 1: are the bad guys. Like what if Darth Citius had
Speaker 1: been like, no, it's the Jedi who are the dark Side. Well,
Speaker 1: I think he also realized that you know, dark Side
Speaker 1: is good branding, you know, yeah, yeah, it looks I
Speaker 1: mean seriously, who looks cool or Darth Vader or what
Speaker 1: Yoda or Obi wan Kenobi. I mean yeah, have you
Speaker 1: ever seen there's an illustrator. I think this is from
Speaker 1: a comic or something where they did an alternate reality
Speaker 1: where Darth Vader fully redeemed himself and survived at some
Speaker 1: point in like say, Return of the Jedi, and then
Speaker 1: he's still in his armor, but now it's white armor,
Speaker 1: white Darth Darth Vader outfit. And I mean it's kind
Speaker 1: of a neat idea. I love the idea of exploring
Speaker 1: alternate possibilities, but on the other hand, it just doesn't
Speaker 1: look as cool as it does in black. Oh. I
Speaker 1: think he should have kept it. I mean, I don't
Speaker 1: love anyway, like the simple like color coordinating of morality.
Speaker 1: I mean, like that's dumb. I mean, and they already
Speaker 1: transcended in some ways, like the Stormtroopers are addressed in
Speaker 1: clean white right. Yeah, so yeah, I think they should
Speaker 1: let Darth Vader keep his original armor. I mean, it
Speaker 1: looks looks awesome. Before we move on from the split
Speaker 1: brain stuff, I just wanted to throw in. So so
Speaker 1: there's some more nuance on the subject that that research
Speaker 1: I alluded to in recent years that's put some challenges
Speaker 1: to the original split brain research. Uh. I think a
Speaker 1: lot of that was associated with the researcher named Pinto,
Speaker 1: I think named Yair Pinto, who I think is a
Speaker 1: Dutch neuropsychologist. And basically what uh, that person and colleagues
Speaker 1: have argued is that the split brain experiments actually just
Speaker 1: proved divided perception, not divided consciousness. But then people who
Speaker 1: people have defended the original research coming back against that.
Speaker 1: I don't remember how all of the back and forth
Speaker 1: worked out right now, but just be aware that there
Speaker 1: is ongoing division about that. In fact, split brain researchers
Speaker 1: appeared to be uh somewhat divided. We may say, yeah,
Speaker 1: well I'm of two minds myself on it. Um. Speaking
Speaker 1: of which, back to the Syrian binary brain. Um. Again,
Speaker 1: they're apparently noted for their ability to come at a
Speaker 1: topic from both sides simultaneously. Um and uh. And I
Speaker 1: got to thinking about that. I mean, one hand, I
Speaker 1: was wondering again, is something they do naturally or is
Speaker 1: it only accessible via training? But I suppose one way
Speaker 1: to really tackle the problem is again to come back
Speaker 1: to human cognition and to ask what seems like it
Speaker 1: should be a pretty simple question. Is it possible for
Speaker 1: a human to think two things at one time, not
Speaker 1: to juggle between thoughts, or to focus on like a
Speaker 1: combination of two things. Like you know, for instance, I
Speaker 1: can think about a human and I can think about
Speaker 1: a horse. You know, I can sort of go back
Speaker 1: and forth between the two. I can focus on the
Speaker 1: idea of a centaur and kind of involve you know,
Speaker 1: both of them at once. But can I think about
Speaker 1: a horse and a human on like on, you know,
Speaker 1: and actually do parallel lines of thought at the same time,
Speaker 1: So not this is a mixture between a horse and
Speaker 1: a human, but to think simultaneously this is one horse
Speaker 1: and this is one human at the same time, right,
Speaker 1: Can I what's the business lingo dual track, parallel path,
Speaker 1: parallel path? I think that means something somewhat different, but yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I know what you're saying, So like, yeah, being able
Speaker 1: to I mean, I think it's a really important thing
Speaker 1: in in good mental hygiene and training your brain to
Speaker 1: work well, that you are able to hold conflicting ideas
Speaker 1: in your mind in order to figure out which one
Speaker 1: makes more sense. I mean, I think it's our natural
Speaker 1: tendency to kind of too instead get a feel for
Speaker 1: conflicting ideas pretty quickly figure out which one were more
Speaker 1: attached to, and then just fully commit to that one
Speaker 1: and not consider the other at all. But I think
Speaker 1: also maybe you're getting at something different, which is not
Speaker 1: um being able to consider conflicting ideas or conflicting explanations
Speaker 1: for something you're talking more about like having the focus
Speaker 1: of attention in the mind be two different things at
Speaker 1: the same time. Is that what you're Okay, Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: that's a different thing. And that's also very interesting because yeah,
Speaker 1: this once again gets into like what is consciousness And
Speaker 1: one of the central features of consciousness seems to be
Speaker 1: this spotlight quality to it, right that it consciousness seems
Speaker 1: to have a basic really like one focal point of
Speaker 1: attention at a time, and other things can kind of
Speaker 1: intrude on consciousness suddenly. But if you are thinking about
Speaker 1: a horse, you're also not simultaneously thinking with the same
Speaker 1: level of focus and intensity about a person, right, right,
Speaker 1: And so this is something that a psychologist by the
Speaker 1: name of Nick I believe it is Shader. I could
Speaker 1: have his last name pronounced wrong. If so, I apologize
Speaker 1: here at c h A t E r Um. But
Speaker 1: he is the author of the mind is flat, the
Speaker 1: illusion of mental depth in the improvised mind. And what
Speaker 1: he would argue here is that that we depend on
Speaker 1: a cycle of thought whereby a number of systems work
Speaker 1: to push forward ideas step by step. Uh so I
Speaker 1: he would argue, I think if he worked to weigh
Speaker 1: in on this topic, that are limited human neural capacity
Speaker 1: is only sufficient to pursue one goal at a time,
Speaker 1: and maybe just maybe doubled human neural capacity is what
Speaker 1: it would actually take to truly dual track something. Does
Speaker 1: that make sense? Yeah, I think so. So he's saying
Speaker 1: to to like consider like to you know, it's kind
Speaker 1: of how when we're making like a to do list,
Speaker 1: you have to break tasks apart into into like individual
Speaker 1: steps and do them one at a time. Uh. And
Speaker 1: I find, you know, doing that for me, it definitely
Speaker 1: helps me organize the flow of of work a lot better.
Speaker 1: But maybe if you had a more powerful mind, if
Speaker 1: you had like two brains in your head, you could
Speaker 1: actually you wouldn't have to break things into parts quite
Speaker 1: so much. You could, you know, consider more sort of
Speaker 1: umbrella tasks with all of their subdivided parts simultaneously. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And I think ultimately it's it's very difficult to imagine
Speaker 1: what that would be like. I mean, it's kind of
Speaker 1: like trying to imagine what would our view of reality
Speaker 1: be like if we could also, uh, you know, feel
Speaker 1: the magnetosphere or something you know, or or or you know,
Speaker 1: see wavelengths of light that we we don't have access
Speaker 1: to that sort of thing. Um Now, the author of
Speaker 1: the mind is Flat. He was also a co author
Speaker 1: on a paper um along with Elizabeth A. Mayor Mayler
Speaker 1: and Gregory V. Jones from two thousand one titled searching
Speaker 1: for Two Things at Once. And in this the author's
Speaker 1: conducted an experiment into whether retrieval from semantic memory and
Speaker 1: autobiographical memory is exclusive or whether people can search for
Speaker 1: two things at once, and they concluded that quote exclusivity
Speaker 1: was observed to occur in retrieval among multiple non overlapping
Speaker 1: categories in both semantic and autobiographical memory. Again, they're they're
Speaker 1: talking about about memory recall here, but this also seems
Speaker 1: to get it sort of the same idea. I was
Speaker 1: reading a summary of the mind is Flat by Stephen
Speaker 1: Poole for The Guardian, and they summarize some of this
Speaker 1: by by by saying, quote, we can't even see two
Speaker 1: or more colors at once, but switch between one at
Speaker 1: a time. In general, our richness of experience seems to
Speaker 1: be a construct. And we've touched on some of this
Speaker 1: before as well, especially with vision about like how, um
Speaker 1: you know, we we have this idea in our mind
Speaker 1: that the whole everything we can see with our eyes
Speaker 1: at one time are in like full color and maybe
Speaker 1: even full detail. But you don't have to really get
Speaker 1: too experimental. You can just to to realize that this
Speaker 1: is not the case. Yeah, And there are tons of
Speaker 1: examples of this. We like if you close one eye,
Speaker 1: you still feel like you have total vision and you
Speaker 1: can see all around, but in fact there's a blind
Speaker 1: spot caused by your optic nerve, and you just don't
Speaker 1: see that there is a blind spot there um or.
Speaker 1: One of the other examples we've often cited is color
Speaker 1: blindness and peripheral vision, Like you believe that you can
Speaker 1: see color in your peripheral vision until you try it,
Speaker 1: Like somebody holds up different colored objects right at the
Speaker 1: edge of where you can see, and it turns out
Speaker 1: you can't. You know, you can't see different colors there.
Speaker 1: You can only see vague things. Something is moving. Even
Speaker 1: though it totally like a percent, it feels like I
Speaker 1: can see color in my periphery, so so very roughly,
Speaker 1: if we take that idea and we we extrapolate it
Speaker 1: to cognition itself, you know, we can we see the
Speaker 1: limitations of of our focus. We see the limitations of
Speaker 1: how we construct a world and focus on it, you know,
Speaker 1: and it is you could basically break it down to
Speaker 1: the idea of we have the one spotlight, but if
Speaker 1: we had two brains in our head, would we essentially
Speaker 1: have two spotlights. That's very interesting and it makes me
Speaker 1: wonder what the practical differences in like say, a culture
Speaker 1: and a technosphere and a science developed by people with
Speaker 1: brains of that type would be, Like, like, how is
Speaker 1: art different if you can focus on more than one
Speaker 1: thing at a time? How how is science and technology
Speaker 1: different if you can focus on more than one thing
Speaker 1: at a time? Yeah, or even your your use of
Speaker 1: symbols and language, etcetera. I mean it kind of coming
Speaker 1: back to the idea of the center. The center exists
Speaker 1: to a certain extent because it combines two things into
Speaker 1: one and brags in aspects of both of those independent things.
Speaker 1: But would you would these types, would these forms be
Speaker 1: necessary for um uh, for the Syrians, or would they
Speaker 1: by just by necessity? Would all of their hybrids be
Speaker 1: more complex chimeras that involve like multiple aspects, like at
Speaker 1: least four aspects, because in terms of just contemplating two parallels,
Speaker 1: they can do that on their own. They don't need
Speaker 1: a symbol to help with it. This is really interesting.
Speaker 1: I want more about the Syrians now, I want like
Speaker 1: Syrian focused Star Wars stories. I want to master moondy
Speaker 1: Um novelization to read somebody, why do we not have one?
Speaker 1: Mace Window got his own book. It's really really difficult
Speaker 1: to follow his inner monologue though. Oh man, it's it's
Speaker 1: actually two volumes and you have to read them at
Speaker 1: the same time. Oh wait, No, that's a fantastic idea. Actually,
Speaker 1: you write two different novels that narrate the exact same events,
Speaker 1: but they're one is from each each brain in the head.
Speaker 1: That's really yeah, that could be good, now, that would
Speaker 1: that would actually be a fun Yeah, short story exercise
Speaker 1: if someone wanted it to keep it simple, all right,
Speaker 1: talk about his death, like the final moments leading up
Speaker 1: to his death, to his betrayal by the Clone troopers.
Speaker 1: He was aside, he was working aside, Like what is
Speaker 1: one account of it and what is the other? Like,
Speaker 1: I guess one account is kind of like I didn't
Speaker 1: see this coming at all. The other account is is Yeah,
Speaker 1: that makes sense. Yeah, I should have talked to the
Speaker 1: other brain about this before we ran out of them
Speaker 1: on the bridge. All Right, well, I say we we
Speaker 1: close out on the Syrians for now. Obviously there there
Speaker 1: are a ton of other weird brains and multi headed
Speaker 1: things we could talk about in Star Wars universe. But
Speaker 1: uh yeah, for for some reason, I think the Syrian
Speaker 1: was the one that that captured my imagination the most here.
Speaker 1: This was a very good pick. Thank thank thank all Right,
Speaker 1: what do you have, Joe, what do you have for us? Okay, Well,
Speaker 1: you had to help me with the Star Wars aspect
Speaker 1: of this one, because I admit this is one that
Speaker 1: I backed into because I got interested in the analogy
Speaker 1: animal from reality first, to be fully transparent. This is
Speaker 1: a type of animal that I first started looking at
Speaker 1: for our episode last week. I think it was about
Speaker 1: the sargassum seaweed, but then I realized that it didn't
Speaker 1: really fit super well into that episode. This animal is
Speaker 1: not especially associated with sargassum, only in certain occasions. Uh,
Speaker 1: So I figured I would actually save it for this,
Speaker 1: and I found what I believe is a fantastic wedge
Speaker 1: to to get into the Star Wars universe. But I
Speaker 1: felt like I had to hold up a hand and
Speaker 1: be honest about where this comes from. Oh, fair enough,
Speaker 1: but I wanted to think about bipedal, aquatic, humanoid aliens,
Speaker 1: sentient water creatures who stand up on two feet with
Speaker 1: a Homo sapiens posture. Now, the first one I thought
Speaker 1: about is is not your your excellent pick here, It's
Speaker 1: something that doesn't quite fit my animal as well. But uh,
Speaker 1: the first one I wanted to talk about is one
Speaker 1: of my favorites from childhood, Admiral Akbar from Return of
Speaker 1: the Jedi, And I think he's been featured in many
Speaker 1: other things since. But Admiral Bar the the noble, brilliant,
Speaker 1: big eyed commander of the Rebel fleet during its attack
Speaker 1: on the Second Death Star. Famously, he discovers it is
Speaker 1: a trap. Yeah, he's a super fun character. Wonderful, just
Speaker 1: wonderful special effects makeup to create that guy and uh,
Speaker 1: and that that species is is fleshed out a bit
Speaker 1: more in the Clone Wars animated series as well. We
Speaker 1: get to go to their their home world of of Mancola,
Speaker 1: which is this ocean world and it's also where the
Speaker 1: Corean live. Um. I don't know if you remember these guys.
Speaker 1: They were also I think first uh shown to us
Speaker 1: in Return of the Jedi. But they're like a squid
Speaker 1: face guy. Yeah, they pop up in a job as
Speaker 1: palace I believe, yes, so, Admiral Akbar. Species is called
Speaker 1: the Montclamari and they are native to this home planet
Speaker 1: of Montcola. But also, yes, the Coreans these other creatures
Speaker 1: who look more like So, the Montclamari are an amphibious
Speaker 1: species and they look sort of I guess the closest
Speaker 1: analogy in Earth it would be they look kind of
Speaker 1: like frogs. They've got frog like eyes and kind of
Speaker 1: frog like skin, and it would make sense since they're
Speaker 1: supposed to be amphibious. But the Corn's they look more
Speaker 1: like bipedal uh humans basically, but with squids for heads.
Speaker 1: I think they've sometimes been called like kind of Catholic aliens,
Speaker 1: now the mont Calamari. This does raise a number of
Speaker 1: questions itself, because I wonder how does the bipedalism of
Speaker 1: the mont calumari evolve Like bipedalism and limit even limited
Speaker 1: by beetle behaviors can be found in a number of
Speaker 1: terrestrial animals on Earth. You've got birds and their extinct
Speaker 1: therapod dinosaur relatives, some reptiles such as you know the
Speaker 1: reptiles we've discussed in the past, lizards that run on
Speaker 1: the water with two back legs. Of course, in primate
Speaker 1: so number of animals will stand up on two legs.
Speaker 1: But almost all the cases I can think of with
Speaker 1: this involve animals that are standing on or walking on
Speaker 1: solid land, or walking or running across the top of
Speaker 1: the water. And it's actually still a matter of debate
Speaker 1: in a pretty interesting way, how human ancestors developed full
Speaker 1: time by petals um. One of the bygone hypotheses you've
Speaker 1: probably heard, this was from the old days, was that
Speaker 1: human ancestors evolved by petalism so that they could see
Speaker 1: over the tall grasses of the savannah. But I think
Speaker 1: this hypothesis is mostly discarded now. One of the main
Speaker 1: reasons is that it looks like from from the fossil
Speaker 1: record that humans became bipetle when they still lived primarily
Speaker 1: in an arboreal environment, so around the trees, not in
Speaker 1: grasslands with tall grasses. And so there are a number
Speaker 1: of competing hypotheses today, one of which that's pretty interesting,
Speaker 1: or I guess several actually get into the idea that
Speaker 1: by petalism evolved because of the evolutionary advantages in various
Speaker 1: different ways of having free hands available for carrying things
Speaker 1: around while you move. Yeah, as I'm hunting and gathering,
Speaker 1: like I need those free hands to hold like my
Speaker 1: my satchel of collected berries or mushrooms or the tools
Speaker 1: that I'm using, yeah, to like bring back to your
Speaker 1: family from across a long distance or something like that.
Speaker 1: But there could be another explanation this better. This is
Speaker 1: one one of those things where I think the it's
Speaker 1: wide open, you know, they're there are tons of different
Speaker 1: ideas competing, and and so it's very interesting for that reason.
Speaker 1: But whatever the reason that that human ancestors evolved full
Speaker 1: time by petalism, it does seem kind of weird. To
Speaker 1: imagine by petalism evolving in an aquatic or mostly aquatic species,
Speaker 1: Like what are they walking around on? You know, are
Speaker 1: they walking around on the ocean floor? In order to
Speaker 1: do that, it would seem like they would have to
Speaker 1: be very dense, right, Like they sink to the bottom
Speaker 1: and they need to stand up and walk around on
Speaker 1: the bottom. You'd imagine they'd mostly be geared for for swimming. Uh.
Speaker 1: Though maybe I don't know, because the Mont Calamari it
Speaker 1: says that they're an amphibious species. Maybe they evolved by
Speaker 1: petalism for whatever part of their life they spend walking
Speaker 1: around outside the water on the land, if they if
Speaker 1: they do that at all, I don't know all that
Speaker 1: much about the Montcolamari. But amphibious, yeah maybe yeah. In
Speaker 1: the episodes of Clone Wars where they're they're more fleshed out,
Speaker 1: we we don't really always see here. I think some
Speaker 1: like big submersible environments, and of course a lot of
Speaker 1: like open water warfare that's taking place. So I don't
Speaker 1: know if that ultimately we get much in the way
Speaker 1: of answers from that show either, But in thinking about
Speaker 1: other bipedal upright water aliens in the Star Wars universe. Rob,
Speaker 1: You're gonna have to help me with this one, because
Speaker 1: you connected me to the species and I knew nothing
Speaker 1: about it previously. But there is a species from the
Speaker 1: Star Wars universe called the Nephron in E P H
Speaker 1: R A N. And this is much closer to what
Speaker 1: I want to talk about here, because this is a
Speaker 1: bipedal aquatic alien that's more like a crustacean, like a
Speaker 1: bipedal shrimp or crab. They are said to come from
Speaker 1: an ocean world in the Star Wars galaxy called Nepotus.
Speaker 1: And the main example character of this species is a
Speaker 1: person from stuff I haven't seen called erm scissor Punch.
Speaker 1: Can can you fill me in? Yeah, So this is
Speaker 1: a character, if if memory serves, pops up in the
Speaker 1: movie Solo, which of course the Han Solo prequel, which
Speaker 1: I know some folks didn't care for. I we thought
Speaker 1: it was a lot of fun when we watched as
Speaker 1: a family. Uh. It certainly has some great aliens in it,
Speaker 1: for sure, and this is one of them. Uh. You know,
Speaker 1: this kind of shrimpy, squitty looking guy and he's wearing
Speaker 1: what looks to be like an interstellar flight suit. So
Speaker 1: this seems to support like the theory that underwater creatures
Speaker 1: in the Star Wars universe perhaps have an advantage when
Speaker 1: it comes to navigating the three dimensional world of open space,
Speaker 1: because again think of the mont Calamari. Where do we
Speaker 1: encounter them time and time again, uh, strategic commanders during
Speaker 1: space warfare. So it makes you wonder do they have
Speaker 1: some sort of would they have some sort of advantage
Speaker 1: they're used to the oceanic environment, like the open water
Speaker 1: warfare environment and the survival environment, do they Are they
Speaker 1: better than contemplating threats in outer space? That would make
Speaker 1: a lot of sense. Now, there's still some important differences.
Speaker 1: I'd say one of the most important differences is even
Speaker 1: within the water column, you've still got an up and down.
Speaker 1: You've got gravity and buoyancy, which you don't have in space.
Speaker 1: In space, there's no up and down. It's just a
Speaker 1: limitless three dimensional space. But even with that, you can
Speaker 1: still see the advantage where you're naturally evolutionarily adapted to
Speaker 1: combat within the space where you can move in three
Speaker 1: different dimensions in a way that we can't really on
Speaker 1: the surface of the Earth, Like you can jump and
Speaker 1: you can climb a tree, and stuff, but mostly you're
Speaker 1: just gonna be on flat ground when you're fighting other people. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and of course you can have aircraft and stuff, but
Speaker 1: that's not really part of the ancestral environment that shaped
Speaker 1: our brains. Yeah, I imagine the reverse. Those probably true
Speaker 1: to have a like a crustacean alien had an advantage,
Speaker 1: and imagining open space warfare, they'd probably also be really disadvantaged.
Speaker 1: Imagining like a land warfare. That would be like, like, what,
Speaker 1: what's your command, general, and they would be like move
Speaker 1: swim away, yea swim away, Yeah, get back in the water.
Speaker 1: So this guy is called therm scissor Punch, and at
Speaker 1: first the name seemed weird to me until I connected
Speaker 1: it to the fact that he has crab like claws
Speaker 1: instead of hands. So if he punches you, I guess
Speaker 1: it is much like being punched with a giant blunt
Speaker 1: pair of scissors. Yeah, yeah, I think so Okay, But
Speaker 1: here we're gonna make the lateral leap to real biology
Speaker 1: because I've got a crustacean with an eerily human bipedal
Speaker 1: type posture to talk about. And this is the skeleton
Speaker 1: shrimp from the crustacean family Caprella Day this is one
Speaker 1: absolutely to look up pictures of. Go google skeleton shrimp.
Speaker 1: While I'm talking about this, they look very cool, very creepy,
Speaker 1: and on top of that, and on top of their
Speaker 1: they're kind of haunting creepy appearance. They somehow to me
Speaker 1: look a little bit scene. I can't quite explain it
Speaker 1: very well, but they look like an acolyte of some
Speaker 1: horrible shadow god that was rightly banished to the cavern
Speaker 1: of tears. Yeah, they are very strange looking. And that's
Speaker 1: even if you're approaching it with the idea that, yeah,
Speaker 1: there are a lot of different shrimp in the ocean,
Speaker 1: and not all shrimp, you know, look like the shrimp
Speaker 1: that you might buy at the seafood store. But these guys, especially,
Speaker 1: they feel like they earn their nickname the skeleton shrimp
Speaker 1: or the ghost shrimp. They look like some sort of
Speaker 1: a horrible shrimp wraith wraith shrimp, that would be a
Speaker 1: good name for them. I think they're called skeleton shrimp
Speaker 1: because they typically have a very spind ly appearance. They're
Speaker 1: almost like a stick insect, but creepier. Now. They're typically
Speaker 1: very small. They range in size from a few millimeters
Speaker 1: to a couple of inches long. But if you get
Speaker 1: up close and you look at them with some magnification,
Speaker 1: you'll notice that they often have an upright posture where
Speaker 1: they will stretch their body out as they cling onto
Speaker 1: something with their back legs. So in that sense they
Speaker 1: look eerily human. But in addition to this, they often
Speaker 1: have a kind of bent over supplicant posture within that
Speaker 1: upstanding position, almost looking like they're in prayer. Again, I
Speaker 1: guess to that, to that rightly banished God. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: in a way, similar posture to old scissor punch. There,
Speaker 1: he looks a little bit bent over in the skills
Speaker 1: I have of him. Oh, yes, you're right, I've seen
Speaker 1: some of the skills I've seen of him. He looks
Speaker 1: like he's hanging his head, or maybe like he's about
Speaker 1: to bow down at the altar. Gravity is really hard
Speaker 1: on him. But he must gamble, he must play comics.
Speaker 1: Uh So, I was wondering if my raw sense of
Speaker 1: obscenity when looking at a skeleton shrimp comes from the
Speaker 1: different body parts that seem to defy type. It has
Speaker 1: antentnie that look like legs, and claws that look like heads,
Speaker 1: and little claws near the face of the actual head.
Speaker 1: It's it's mains are called natopods, and it has smaller
Speaker 1: natopods near its face that look kind of like, I
Speaker 1: don't know, like hip facial hair, facial or I don't
Speaker 1: know how hip it would be the kind of facial
Speaker 1: hair that makes a statement. Now, despite being called skeleton shrimp,
Speaker 1: these are not exactly super closely related to the shrimp
Speaker 1: that you would eat in your shrimp cocktail um skeleton
Speaker 1: shrimp in fact, consistent with what I was just saying
Speaker 1: about their their different weird claws and legs. They are
Speaker 1: of an order of crustaceans known as amphipods, which literally
Speaker 1: means different feet as opposed to related crustaceans that have
Speaker 1: more consistent sets of feet. And I was reading about
Speaker 1: them on a page for the Monterey Bay Aquarium that
Speaker 1: mentions that these animals are sometimes called praying mantises of
Speaker 1: the sea. I can absolutely understand the comparison. In addition
Speaker 1: to the of course praying posture I mentioned, uh, the
Speaker 1: claws look very much like the raptorial four legs of
Speaker 1: a praying mantis. So skeleton shrimp emper often camouflaged within
Speaker 1: their environment, making forests of seaweed a really great habitat
Speaker 1: for them. Uh. They're often found clinging to branzonens, hydroids
Speaker 1: or eel grass, sometimes even in patches of sarcassum, which
Speaker 1: we talked about last week. Those skeleton shrimp are found
Speaker 1: in other habitats as well. You can find them on
Speaker 1: a ship's hull or on some other animals body. Even
Speaker 1: one video I was watching of skeleton shrimp showed hundreds,
Speaker 1: I don't know, maybe thousands of tiny skeleton shrimp clinging
Speaker 1: to the scales of a scorpion fish, crowded right around
Speaker 1: the fish's eye. I tried to take a take a
Speaker 1: screen grab so you can see it here robbed down below.
Speaker 1: But they're just crowded around the eye and all over
Speaker 1: the top of his head, and they're just swaying around
Speaker 1: in the water. And the fish does not really look
Speaker 1: put out, I know, like at first glance, these look
Speaker 1: like eyebrows and tufts of hair, almost kind of zat
Speaker 1: ish tufts of hair, you know. Oh, yes, sometimes they
Speaker 1: can look quite fuzzy, especially when the females are carrying
Speaker 1: their brood along with them, like after mating. They they
Speaker 1: reproduce sexually and after mating, the females will sometimes carry
Speaker 1: around what looks almost like a ball of dandelion fuzz
Speaker 1: or something, but that's all they're young that that haven't
Speaker 1: left the mother's body yet. Now. The different appendages jutting
Speaker 1: off of their bodies provide a range of different ways
Speaker 1: to survive. In general, their back legs are for gripping
Speaker 1: onto a substrate, and this is where you get the
Speaker 1: bipedal posture. Here you will very often see skeleton shrimp
Speaker 1: clinging to something a piece of seaweed or even a
Speaker 1: scorpion fish's head or something with their back legs while
Speaker 1: their body is stretched out above that, looking like they're
Speaker 1: standing up and reaching out into the water. And then meanwhile,
Speaker 1: while they're clinging with their back legs and standing up
Speaker 1: like this, they're larger front legs with the folding features
Speaker 1: that look like mantis claws. These can be used for
Speaker 1: rooming the body or for violence in fighting each other,
Speaker 1: which it seems like they do a lot, or for
Speaker 1: snagging food, and the antennae coming off of their head
Speaker 1: apparently can sometimes be used for filter feeding. They eat
Speaker 1: everything it seems that they say are different. Different species
Speaker 1: of them will eat different things. Sometimes, but they're they're
Speaker 1: pretty omnivorous. They scavenge for floating detritus, meaning particles of
Speaker 1: dead organic matter. They're just sort of like hanging around
Speaker 1: in the water. Sometimes they eat algae, or sometimes they
Speaker 1: act as predators. They can snag, kill and eat live prey,
Speaker 1: for example worms or crustacean larvae. And though they look
Speaker 1: very bipedal when they're attached to a substrate and reaching
Speaker 1: out into the water, I thought this was interesting. They
Speaker 1: generally move not by walking on their back legs, but
Speaker 1: by gripping the substrate, folding their body over, and then
Speaker 1: sliding along like an inchworm. Again, very creepy. And there's
Speaker 1: another fascinating comparison to the praying manti us. Some species
Speaker 1: of skeleton shrimp practice sexual homicide, where the female will
Speaker 1: kill the male after mating, sometimes by stabbing them with
Speaker 1: a special claw and injecting them with venom. Which this
Speaker 1: strikes me as a very interesting example of convergent evolution
Speaker 1: because of course this is there's this superficial resemblance between
Speaker 1: the body form of a praying mantis and a skeleton shrimp.
Speaker 1: They have these similar raptorial fore legs and similar posture
Speaker 1: and stuff, and like a praying mantis, sometimes the female
Speaker 1: will kill the male after mating. Uh though I didn't
Speaker 1: see much about the female eating the male after mating.
Speaker 1: Maybe they do, because sometimes these skeleton shrimp are cannibalistic,
Speaker 1: but mainly I just saw about killing the male with
Speaker 1: this venomous claw. I was wondering why it would be
Speaker 1: that the female would kill the male after mating. I
Speaker 1: wonder if this is in part to prevent the males
Speaker 1: from cannibalizing them or their offspring in the future. So
Speaker 1: there are a couple of things they're one of which
Speaker 1: is that mating. Uh So, of course these crustaceans, like
Speaker 1: other crustaceans, they have to grow by molting, right because
Speaker 1: having a hard outer exo skeleton, you can't get bigger
Speaker 1: with a hardened outer exo skeleton. You have to shed
Speaker 1: the exo skeleton and then come come out as a
Speaker 1: larger soft version of yourself, and then the outer layer
Speaker 1: of you hardens into a new larger exo skeleton. This
Speaker 1: is the molting process. And apparently skeleton shrimp can only
Speaker 1: mate when the female is freshly molted, so I don't know.
Speaker 1: It's possibly that means that she could be in a
Speaker 1: in a more vulnerable position around the time of mating,
Speaker 1: or it could be to prevent males from from eating
Speaker 1: the new larva that will be coming along soon. I
Speaker 1: don't know, I wonder I like the idea that they
Speaker 1: have they may have a special claw for this though.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, yeah, with with the venom and apparently the
Speaker 1: males also sometimes have venomous claws which they use for
Speaker 1: fighting each other. I think in some cases, at least
Speaker 1: for access tomating real scissor punches. They're right exactly, But
Speaker 1: as I said already, skeleton shrimp are really something that
Speaker 1: you need to see with your eyes to appreciate. So
Speaker 1: I would highly recommend looking up some pictures and looking
Speaker 1: up some videos of these animals. They're they're very small,
Speaker 1: but they're beautiful, creepy, unsettling, worth your attention, absolutely. Thank Alright,
Speaker 1: I think we have time for one more specimen here,
Speaker 1: oh boy, And for this one, Joe, I'm gonna have
Speaker 1: to ask you to come to the planet and Naboo
Speaker 1: with me. Well, I'll always go to Naboo. Well, I mean,
Speaker 1: it's an interesting world. I would say one of the
Speaker 1: most interesting in the Star Wars universe. Because even outside
Speaker 1: of its important role in galactic history, it has just
Speaker 1: incredibly rich fauna. You have human human settlers coming to
Speaker 1: the planet at some point, and then there's signs of
Speaker 1: an elder civilization. But you have this native Gungan population
Speaker 1: um that are an advanced st amphibious species that make
Speaker 1: their home and underwater cities, and the planets expansive underwater oceans.
Speaker 1: Uh Naboo seems to have a vast uh number of
Speaker 1: of impressive land animals, many of which are used as
Speaker 1: battle mounts by the Gungans. But then you have this
Speaker 1: this shadowy underwater realm that is home to just many,
Speaker 1: many marine organisms. And there's a fabulous uh section in
Speaker 1: The Phantom Menace where we get to explore it a bit. Uh.
Speaker 1: It's the scene where we have our main characters there
Speaker 1: uh with with the kid I think and and uh
Speaker 1: and jar Jar and they're in a submarine and they
Speaker 1: are attacked by one giant underwater creature after another, each
Speaker 1: one bigger and more horrifying than the last. Out of
Speaker 1: the frying pan and into the fish. Yes. So the
Speaker 1: first one that attacks is this thing that's opec killer
Speaker 1: that looks kind of like a like a deep sea
Speaker 1: angler fish type of of a thing. Then they're attacked
Speaker 1: by the colo clawfish, which looks like a cross between
Speaker 1: a crocodile and an eel, and then finally by this
Speaker 1: even more titanic Sando Aqua monster, which is just an
Speaker 1: apex of apex predators, looks like some sort of a
Speaker 1: salamandary um giant. Do I recall that in this sequence
Speaker 1: they are trying to like take a submarine through the
Speaker 1: center of the world to get to the other side
Speaker 1: of the planet or something. I don't remember if they're
Speaker 1: I don't remember if they're actually going through the center,
Speaker 1: but they are, at least at the very least. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they're going through the deep underwater sections of the of
Speaker 1: of the world to get to a specific location. Okay, Okay,
Speaker 1: maybe it might just be underwater caves. Yeah, but I
Speaker 1: don't know, it could be. If it is. If it's
Speaker 1: the former, then it it's dante Esk and it's and
Speaker 1: it's nature, right. Yeah, But anyway, the creature of these
Speaker 1: three I want to talk about is that middle one,
Speaker 1: the colo clawfish, which which is pretty neat, little looking.
Speaker 1: I mean, all three of these are impressive creatures. This
Speaker 1: one is um is again enormous. Its head is larger
Speaker 1: than the Gungan sub. We're told in like the Alien
Speaker 1: Archive and other books that they can reach lengths of
Speaker 1: at least forty one feet. Their long bioluminescent predators with
Speaker 1: mandible like four legs to grip their their prey. And
Speaker 1: there's long mouth of razor sharp teeth and I and
Speaker 1: I believe they're supposed to have venomous things, and there
Speaker 1: is as well to partially or completely disable some of
Speaker 1: their prey. And they can unhinge their jaw like a
Speaker 1: terrestrial snake in order to eat prey larger than their
Speaker 1: own head. But the part that interests me the most
Speaker 1: here is this one little tid debt that is that's
Speaker 1: described in the Star Wars Alien Archive book quote. However,
Speaker 1: Coolo's must ensure their prey is dead before ingesting it.
Speaker 1: Their digestive systems are slow and they run the risk
Speaker 1: of being eaten from inside out if the prey remains alive.
Speaker 1: WHOA So obviously that got me thinking, I was like,
Speaker 1: is there anything like this here on Earth? And uh?
Speaker 1: I found an excellent article on this in BBC Earth
Speaker 1: by Sandrine Kristamont. This is from and and they made
Speaker 1: some wonderful points on on this. So basically, as the
Speaker 1: author points out, you'd probably need two key realities to
Speaker 1: be in place for something like this to happen. So,
Speaker 1: first of all, the animal would have to survive the
Speaker 1: jaws of its attacker. It would have to be swallowed whole.
Speaker 1: No fatal crushing, no incapacitating venom uh you know, inserted
Speaker 1: into the creature. It would know. No death roll or
Speaker 1: death shake. Yeah, no death roll, no death shake, no
Speaker 1: intentional breaking of the bones like you see with you know,
Speaker 1: like a cattle due to it to its um you know,
Speaker 1: rodent prey um, and you know it would it would
Speaker 1: just have to happen in the case of an animal
Speaker 1: that just gulps its prey down whole. Secondly, the digestive
Speaker 1: juices would have to be weak enough and or the
Speaker 1: praise outer covering would have to be resilient enough for
Speaker 1: it to survive entry into the stomach at least initial entry,
Speaker 1: if not its entire time there. So it seems like
Speaker 1: maybe there's some risk at like swallowing hole a creature
Speaker 1: with a hard outer layer, like if you swallowed a
Speaker 1: whole crab that could be pretty bad, right, And then
Speaker 1: also it would help if the prey and question has
Speaker 1: some sort of ace up its sleeve as well. So
Speaker 1: as the author explains, yes, there are cases where all
Speaker 1: of these things seem to line up. Um. The first
Speaker 1: one is the rough skinned newt can survive being swallowed
Speaker 1: by a frog and in and in large part this
Speaker 1: is because it packs enough toxin to kill the predator
Speaker 1: before the digestive juices overpower it. Quote. Then the news
Speaker 1: simply has to crawl back up the dead frog's throat
Speaker 1: and out of its mouth, which is pretty badass. I
Speaker 1: like that. Yes, that is power you can respect. Now.
Speaker 1: The next example is is even weirder and maybe maybe
Speaker 1: not as as cool in the sense that like, it's
Speaker 1: not a full survival story, but it's still really amazing.
Speaker 1: And that is the case of the brahminy blind snake,
Speaker 1: a tiny natural burrower, and it has been observed to
Speaker 1: survive the digestion of a toad and emerge out the
Speaker 1: other end of the toad, essentially swallowed by the toad
Speaker 1: and then just wriggles through the rest of the way
Speaker 1: and out the rear entry um or the rear exit
Speaker 1: as it were. Uh, so in these cases of survival,
Speaker 1: it also really helps if, if if it maybe even
Speaker 1: be essential, that there's not another big meal up ahead
Speaker 1: of it blocking the way. But then this is also
Speaker 1: a situation where protection from the digestive juices seems to
Speaker 1: be key. This is what the author Kristomont had to say.
Speaker 1: Quote but its skin was probably the biggest lifesaver. The
Speaker 1: closely knit, overlapping scales that help blind snakes move on
Speaker 1: land would likely block gastric juices, preventing them from reaching
Speaker 1: delicate tissues and organs. The scales of other snakes come
Speaker 1: apart slightly when they move, so would not have the
Speaker 1: same protective effect. It's like a natural hazmat suit. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I have never I don't think I've ever considered this
Speaker 1: as a strategy for defending against predators before. Uh, when
Speaker 1: I've always thought about trying to avoid getting eaten, I've
Speaker 1: thought about trying to escape or trying to fight back,
Speaker 1: not preventing eating from hurting you, Like, yeah, just get
Speaker 1: eaten and you know you'll be okay. Probably, Now it
Speaker 1: may be a case. First of all, it seems to
Speaker 1: be a case where this is not certainly not an
Speaker 1: evolved way of surviving predators. Uh. And it also seems
Speaker 1: to be a case where survival is perhaps a um
Speaker 1: an incorrect term for it, because this in the case
Speaker 1: that it was observed by researchers here, the snake died
Speaker 1: five hours later, probably due to complications due to lack
Speaker 1: of oxygen. Because that's the thing. If even if you're
Speaker 1: armored against that that acid or the acid isn't strong enough,
Speaker 1: you're still going to be inside that animal for a
Speaker 1: certain amount of time, if you're not killing it with
Speaker 1: toxins and chron climbing out the front. Uh. You know,
Speaker 1: if you're gonna take the complete journey through, you're gonna
Speaker 1: be without oxygen. And depending on your biology, you know,
Speaker 1: that can have very detrimental effects. That itself can be
Speaker 1: the fatal flaw. Okay, so you're saying this is not
Speaker 1: It doesn't appear that these tiny snakes have evolved a
Speaker 1: capacity to be eaten and survived specifically as a protection
Speaker 1: against predation. It just so happens like it's a coincidence
Speaker 1: that some of their natural defenses for other things happened
Speaker 1: to allow them to survive passing through the digestive system.
Speaker 1: In at least this case, or limited cases. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: maybe it's more of a curse, you know, Yeah, they
Speaker 1: get to survive the whole process. Yeah. Now, on top
Speaker 1: of these cases, apparently there are some land snails that
Speaker 1: can survive the journey through a bird's digestive system. And
Speaker 1: this is a case where you have you have another
Speaker 1: important helpful fact here, and that is SPEEDI or digestion time.
Speaker 1: So just less time spent in the bird's digestive system.
Speaker 1: That means less exposure to the digestive juices, coupled with
Speaker 1: the natural protection of the snail shell, which is key,
Speaker 1: but also the mucus of the snail might also help
Speaker 1: serve as a protective barrier like a chemical armor. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And so you have some aquatic snails as well that
Speaker 1: have been that have been observed to be very um
Speaker 1: uh resilient to digestion. You have nematode worms, of course,
Speaker 1: some of which are true internal parasites. So once you
Speaker 1: get into that territory, I think we're more inclined to
Speaker 1: uh is not expect but you know, not be surprised
Speaker 1: by that kind of resiliency things that that survive in
Speaker 1: the digestive system of of of host organisms. But you
Speaker 1: generally don't think about snakes, salamanders and other things. Uh,
Speaker 1: you know, having a chance once they're actually in the
Speaker 1: predator's gullet. You have opened my eyes so with to
Speaker 1: come back to the planet naboo. Uh I guess the
Speaker 1: idea here is that we're largely talking about other deadly
Speaker 1: predators in the depths of Nebo that, after having been eaten,
Speaker 1: then turn on the pre or host here. Um. You know,
Speaker 1: it's just that that crazy and environment, So it seems
Speaker 1: entirely feasible that you could have something like this, like
Speaker 1: maybe there's one particular type of fish or you know,
Speaker 1: creature in that deep sea underground environment and the boo
Speaker 1: and if it eats those, it gets too excited about them.
Speaker 1: Maybe it's maybe it's a venom doesn't work on that
Speaker 1: on that particular creature, or sometimes maybe it doesn't use
Speaker 1: its venom. Um. You know, often we see that with snakes, right,
Speaker 1: they're not going to use their venom every time if
Speaker 1: they don't have to. It is a it is an
Speaker 1: important resource. But maybe that's a fatal mistake for the
Speaker 1: COLO concerning certain prey species. You don't want to underestimate
Speaker 1: what you're eating. Yeah, all right, Well that's that's all
Speaker 1: I have, Joe, should we close the compendium? Let's let's
Speaker 1: close it up now. Obviously there are tons of other
Speaker 1: creatures and aliens and the Star Wars universe, so you know,
Speaker 1: perhaps there are some other really good candidates that we
Speaker 1: didn't touch on. If you have suggestions for the future,
Speaker 1: let us know. Likewise, you know, we could always take
Speaker 1: this approach to other uh you know, fictional ecosystems and
Speaker 1: uh and take a look at those. I know we
Speaker 1: had some fun talking about the sand worms of Dune,
Speaker 1: uh several years back. Um, Dune is coming back? Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I need to revisit. I think I have some some
Speaker 1: ideas jotted down about things we might might consider when
Speaker 1: we get a little closer to uh to done time.
Speaker 1: Well that's exciting, and hey, they're they're probably other worlds
Speaker 1: I'm not even thinking of. I mean, I guess there's
Speaker 1: Star Trek too. I don't think we've ever done anything
Speaker 1: on Star Trek. If we we have, I'm certainly not
Speaker 1: remembering it. Did you actually watch Star Trek? You weren't
Speaker 1: really a Star Trek guy where you I wasn't an
Speaker 1: original Star Trek guy. But there was. I watched tons
Speaker 1: of Next Generation and tons of Deep Space nine um
Speaker 1: and uh and and you know some of the movies.
Speaker 1: But yeah, that that was my my area. Like I
Speaker 1: think it was like every evening at nine pm, Next
Speaker 1: Generation was on and I always watched it, like that
Speaker 1: was my go to for a while. I like in
Speaker 1: the Uh. I haven't seen all of the Next Generation,
Speaker 1: but I like those episodes. I think, especially in the
Speaker 1: early seasons of TNNG, where they would go down to
Speaker 1: a planet and it would just look like a nineteen
Speaker 1: nineties uh you know, family portrait photo studio with some
Speaker 1: potted plants on it. Yeah, yeah, I remember some of
Speaker 1: those settings. I think I've said this on the show before,
Speaker 1: but I don't know exactly why. I always really really
Speaker 1: love a good cheap indoor for outdoor set. Yeah yeah,
Speaker 1: I've also really been, uh been thinking about this a
Speaker 1: lot in terms of the Outer Limits series, where they
Speaker 1: have some great sets on that show, but also each
Speaker 1: episode is like, Okay, what are they about to film
Speaker 1: in like the Toronto area that they're gonna make look
Speaker 1: like the future or or the post apocalyptic world. Like
Speaker 1: there's some interesting choices at times where it's like you
Speaker 1: know it's it's not really an impressive building they're working
Speaker 1: with here, but they try and figure out ways to
Speaker 1: shoot it in such a way and it feels fresh
Speaker 1: and different compared to all these other episodes they're pumping out.
Speaker 1: So they're actually writing around the second hand sets and
Speaker 1: costumes and stuff. Um, they seem to and I haven't
Speaker 1: seen all the outer limits yet, but they seem to
Speaker 1: do a pretty good job of of not repeating themselves,
Speaker 1: which I think can be hard when you have so
Speaker 1: many episodes that are about being trapped in an alien spaceship,
Speaker 1: being trapped in a in a survival bunker. You know,
Speaker 1: like a lot of the same basic setups are going
Speaker 1: to be in place. Like I wonder how many different
Speaker 1: alien hallways, uh they create alien spaceship hallways they created
Speaker 1: for this show and still found a way to make
Speaker 1: them feel different enough, if not, you know, substantially different.
Speaker 1: It's the mark of a good bottle episode. Different yep,
Speaker 1: just different enough? All right? Should we wrap up? Let's
Speaker 1: wrap up. If you want to listen to other episodes
Speaker 1: of Stuff to Blow your mind, you can find them
Speaker 1: wherever you get your podcasts and wherever that happens to
Speaker 1: be We just ask the rate, review and subscribe Huge
Speaker 1: things As always to our excellent audio producer Seth Nicholas
Speaker 1: john Unson. If you would like to get in touch
Speaker 1: with us with feedback on this episode or any other,
Speaker 1: to suggest a topic for the future, or just to
Speaker 1: say hi, you can email us at contact at stuff
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