WEBVTT - Wind Beneath My Surgical Wings, Part 1 0:00:03.120 --> 0:00:06.000 Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind from how Stuff 0:00:06.000 --> 0:00:13.640 Works dot com. Hey, they're welcome to stuff to Blow 0:00:13.720 --> 0:00:16.880 your Mind. I'm Julie Douglas, and this week Robert Lamb 0:00:16.960 --> 0:00:20.600 is out getting his dendrites cleaned, so we thought, hey, 0:00:20.640 --> 0:00:23.200 why not run an encore presentation of one of our 0:00:23.280 --> 0:00:27.440 favorite episodes, The Wind Beneath My Surgical Wings. It is 0:00:27.480 --> 0:00:30.639 a nice, juicy topic that delves into the transcendence of 0:00:30.640 --> 0:00:35.400 our limited biological capabilities with a dream of light, of course, 0:00:35.600 --> 0:00:43.000 So enough preamble, hope that you enjoyed. Julie, who is 0:00:43.040 --> 0:00:47.519 not dream of either having wings themselves or just dreams 0:00:47.560 --> 0:00:50.960 of winged humanoids flying about? I mean, it's the stuff 0:00:51.000 --> 0:00:54.120 of just ancient myth, the stuff of fantasy, the stuff 0:00:54.160 --> 0:00:58.080 of religion, the stuff of of art. It's there's something 0:00:58.160 --> 0:01:01.800 just irresistible about the idea of a human with the 0:01:01.840 --> 0:01:04.640 wings of a bird, or even the wings of a bat. Yeah. 0:01:04.680 --> 0:01:08.080 The desire to fly, I think is pretty universal. Even 0:01:08.120 --> 0:01:11.880 Dorothy from Oz right somewhere of the rainbow, bluebirds fly, 0:01:12.600 --> 0:01:15.520 birds fly over the rainbow? Why then, oh, why can't 0:01:15.600 --> 0:01:21.800 I go to singing the rest? Okay? But yeah, one 0:01:21.920 --> 0:01:24.360 example that always comes to my mind. I mean there 0:01:24.360 --> 0:01:26.640 are a lot of aiconic ones. Obviously, the myth of 0:01:26.680 --> 0:01:30.040 Acarus and dayalists big the idea that you know, they 0:01:30.160 --> 0:01:32.080 built these wings and then they fly too close to 0:01:32.120 --> 0:01:34.199 the sun and then they plummet. It's just a fantastic 0:01:34.240 --> 0:01:39.280 metaphor for so much in human endeavor, human technology, um, 0:01:39.760 --> 0:01:43.960 humans reaching to achieve things that they were not necessarily 0:01:44.080 --> 0:01:47.920 biologically gifted with, but via their intelligence, are in a 0:01:47.960 --> 0:01:50.600 sense genetically gifted with. I also think back to a 0:01:50.600 --> 0:01:53.640 book called Goodbye to All That by Robert Graves, British 0:01:53.640 --> 0:01:57.040 author who famously wrote I Claudius Um. It's probably what 0:01:57.040 --> 0:01:59.400 he's most known for, but this was his biography and 0:01:59.400 --> 0:02:01.760 he was talking about his um, his service in World 0:02:01.760 --> 0:02:04.480 War One. There's a bit about mountain climbing in that 0:02:04.520 --> 0:02:05.880 as well, because he was one of these just really 0:02:05.880 --> 0:02:08.320 adventurous dudes. He'd go out with his his pals and 0:02:08.360 --> 0:02:11.720 they would scale these these towering cliffs. And there was 0:02:11.760 --> 0:02:14.520 one point where he's talking about, you know, clinging to 0:02:14.600 --> 0:02:17.280 the side of this this rock face. Uh, you know, 0:02:17.320 --> 0:02:19.919 pretty to someone like me who is not a mountain 0:02:19.960 --> 0:02:23.080 climber and will never mountain climb terrifying idea, just to 0:02:23.080 --> 0:02:25.560 imagine myself clinging to the side of a mountain face. 0:02:26.080 --> 0:02:28.240 But he was unfazed by it. He was an adventurous dude, 0:02:28.800 --> 0:02:31.680 had bravery in just a natural inclination for this kind 0:02:31.680 --> 0:02:35.520 of thing. But one time he said, they're scaling, They're 0:02:35.560 --> 0:02:38.600 they're a little tired clinging to the side, and a 0:02:38.680 --> 0:02:41.280 bird like sort of float flies by, but given the 0:02:41.320 --> 0:02:43.360 altitude and the wind kind of floats out there to 0:02:43.400 --> 0:02:46.560 the side, and and he mentioned he was just so 0:02:46.680 --> 0:02:49.440 unnerving the idea that it was like the bird was 0:02:49.440 --> 0:02:52.320 was coaxing him into letting go, as if there was 0:02:52.360 --> 0:02:55.639 another way, as if he could fly, which which also 0:02:55.680 --> 0:02:59.760 gets into these weird impulses we sometimes have of almost 0:02:59.760 --> 0:03:02.480 like off destructive impulses. The the idea that, oh, if 0:03:02.480 --> 0:03:03.880 I get too close to the edge of the building, 0:03:03.919 --> 0:03:06.000 I might jump off. I was to say, because I 0:03:06.040 --> 0:03:09.160 have that. So even if I'm say, like a fairly 0:03:09.200 --> 0:03:11.720 like simple structure like a mall on the second floor, 0:03:11.960 --> 0:03:13.480 I don't want to go to the edge because I 0:03:13.480 --> 0:03:15.480 feel as if I'm going to plunge off. So it's 0:03:15.560 --> 0:03:18.840 kind of interesting that there's this idea of him, you know, 0:03:19.040 --> 0:03:23.160 clinging to the side and this bird sort of mocking 0:03:23.280 --> 0:03:27.000 him to the limits of his own morphology, right, like, hey, dude, 0:03:27.040 --> 0:03:28.920 you're never gonna have wings. You might think you're this 0:03:28.960 --> 0:03:31.399 cool that you can, you know, rock climb up here, 0:03:31.560 --> 0:03:33.840 but you know, let me just buzz around you and 0:03:33.880 --> 0:03:36.480 remind you of this. Yeah. It's like, in a sense, 0:03:36.520 --> 0:03:39.120 we see the birds flying and we we ended it, 0:03:39.160 --> 0:03:40.720 and we feel to a certain extent like it's our 0:03:40.720 --> 0:03:46.080 birthright because vast empty air, vast heights are terrifying, because 0:03:46.120 --> 0:03:47.880 we know that that's a limitation to us. We know 0:03:48.000 --> 0:03:50.960 that those are those are heights that we cannot really 0:03:51.000 --> 0:03:54.560 ascend to. Yes, we you know, we we have airplanes 0:03:54.560 --> 0:03:57.800 at our disposal. We have various, uh methods of flight 0:03:57.880 --> 0:04:00.800 and gliding and skydiving and every think, but they're all 0:04:00.840 --> 0:04:04.120 kind of cheap imitations of the natural biological gifts of 0:04:04.160 --> 0:04:06.840 a bird. That's right, We're greedy. We want it for ourselves. 0:04:06.840 --> 0:04:09.560 It's not enough that we have created flight in the 0:04:09.600 --> 0:04:13.120 form of jets and planes and uh, you know, various 0:04:13.120 --> 0:04:16.440 other modes of transportation. So the question and the question 0:04:16.480 --> 0:04:20.120 for this podcast is is it would it be possible? 0:04:20.520 --> 0:04:25.839 Is it really possible that we could somehow create wings 0:04:25.880 --> 0:04:29.360 for ourselves? Um? And I'm not talking just like strapping 0:04:29.400 --> 0:04:33.560 on wings, because there are wingsuits which are phenomenal. There's 0:04:33.400 --> 0:04:35.920 an article on them on how stuff works dot com 0:04:35.920 --> 0:04:38.880 that I wrote, how wingsuits work, and it's phenomenal technology 0:04:39.320 --> 0:04:42.400 and the people who use them are insane and also 0:04:42.520 --> 0:04:46.920 highly skilled. Um. But yeah, could we actually have biological 0:04:46.920 --> 0:04:48.240 wings that are a part of us, that are an 0:04:48.240 --> 0:04:51.200 extension of us? Right? Could we gain our bodies in 0:04:51.240 --> 0:04:54.240 our minds in order to actually have this be a 0:04:54.279 --> 0:04:56.560 part of our own morphology? And why not? Right? Because 0:04:56.600 --> 0:05:00.520 we've talked about this, this is this is not so crazy, uman, 0:05:00.560 --> 0:05:02.880 it's absolutely out there. But there are so many different 0:05:02.880 --> 0:05:06.200 ways that we have augmented our reality in our physicality 0:05:06.800 --> 0:05:10.839 that uh, no doubt one day this could be a possibility. Yeah, 0:05:10.880 --> 0:05:12.400 I mean you'd, like you said, there's so many things 0:05:12.400 --> 0:05:13.880 we do to our bodies. Anyway, we went into this, 0:05:14.120 --> 0:05:16.200 We've got into this a number of times. We talked 0:05:16.200 --> 0:05:19.600 about posthumanism quite a bit, and and cybernetics. We did 0:05:19.600 --> 0:05:22.880 an episode called the Werewolf Principle um, which probably wasn't 0:05:22.920 --> 0:05:25.440 the best title in the world because it doesn't have 0:05:25.480 --> 0:05:28.120 anything to do with werewolves. It's about that has to 0:05:28.120 --> 0:05:29.840 do with a sci fi story I was reading at 0:05:29.839 --> 0:05:31.719 the time, but the idea that we change our but 0:05:31.839 --> 0:05:35.480 potentially we change our bodies in order to explore space 0:05:35.600 --> 0:05:38.119 and to explore the world. Instead of attempting to bring 0:05:38.920 --> 0:05:42.160 a portion of our atmosphere in our environment with us, 0:05:42.720 --> 0:05:45.680 uh and and and our limitations with us, we instead 0:05:46.120 --> 0:05:49.760 alter ourselves. And certainly we make a lot of augmentations 0:05:49.800 --> 0:05:52.839 to ourselves anyway, so many things such as glasses, contacts, 0:05:53.160 --> 0:05:56.680 various biomedical equipment is added to the human body. We're 0:05:56.720 --> 0:05:59.960 making these changes anyway, for things that are generally thought 0:06:00.000 --> 0:06:03.360 of it is necessary. Um. And then we also make 0:06:03.440 --> 0:06:07.840 changes that are cosmetic in nature. But what about wings? Well, yeah, 0:06:07.880 --> 0:06:10.120 And in order to actually really get to the meat 0:06:10.160 --> 0:06:14.360 of this conversation, we have to bring up Dr Joseph Rosen. 0:06:14.480 --> 0:06:19.400 He is a Dartmouth plastic surgeon and reconstructive surgeon. And 0:06:20.480 --> 0:06:23.240 it's um, I think would be pretty mild just to 0:06:23.279 --> 0:06:25.920 say that he's a futurist. Yeah, And he's a definitely 0:06:25.920 --> 0:06:29.599 a futurist, definitely a post humanist and a he's he's 0:06:29.600 --> 0:06:32.919 one of these amazing individuals that if you look him up. 0:06:32.920 --> 0:06:36.799 You'll find various articles about his work UM, but in particular, 0:06:36.880 --> 0:06:40.200 there was a two thousand and one UM interview slash 0:06:40.600 --> 0:06:45.400 profile in Harper's Magazine by Lawrence Slater. Highly recommend anyone 0:06:45.560 --> 0:06:48.760 read who's fascinated by this topic. It was called Dr Dadalus. 0:06:49.080 --> 0:06:51.720 It's an excellent article. Actually, the way that it was 0:06:51.760 --> 0:06:53.720 written reminded me of Mary Rich in the way that 0:06:53.800 --> 0:06:58.359 she approaches her material, So it is well worth checking out. Alright, 0:06:58.360 --> 0:07:01.120 we're gonna take a quick break, stay tuned for more 0:07:07.120 --> 0:07:09.760 so with Rosen here's the thing he is. He's totally 0:07:09.800 --> 0:07:12.400 steeped in his profession and he takes on something like 0:07:12.520 --> 0:07:17.000 five hundred patients a year to do mostly reconstructive surgery, 0:07:17.000 --> 0:07:18.720 but some plastic surgery as well. I mean, this is 0:07:18.760 --> 0:07:23.440 someone he was an absolute expert in his field. He is, uh, 0:07:23.520 --> 0:07:27.240 he's steeped in the practicalities of it, but he is 0:07:27.320 --> 0:07:30.280 also a big thinker. Yeah, he's a plastic surgeon, but 0:07:30.280 --> 0:07:33.880 but not a mirror cosmetic surgeon. And the article in 0:07:33.960 --> 0:07:36.920 question went into sort of around the turn of the 0:07:36.920 --> 0:07:39.840 millennium where plastic surgery stood about the idea that it's 0:07:39.880 --> 0:07:42.280 sort of sort of in this place where it's often 0:07:42.360 --> 0:07:47.480 looked down on um by people outside of the medical profession, 0:07:47.520 --> 0:07:49.920 and sometimes within the medical profession may be seen as 0:07:50.360 --> 0:07:53.840 as a as a lesser medical practice, which of course 0:07:53.920 --> 0:07:56.560 is not not the case when you look at the 0:07:56.560 --> 0:08:01.239 the the non cosmetic applications, when you're looking at people 0:08:01.240 --> 0:08:04.800 who have undergone a serious injury, particularly facial injuries for instance, 0:08:04.800 --> 0:08:07.520 and finding ways to correct that and and bring a 0:08:07.560 --> 0:08:10.640 certain amount of normalcy back to that person's life. When 0:08:10.680 --> 0:08:14.840 you look at cleft palate and cleft lip reconstruction, yeah, 0:08:14.880 --> 0:08:16.520 I mean, there's there's a lot that goes on in 0:08:16.560 --> 0:08:20.840 plastic surgery that is not breast jobs. But but that 0:08:20.840 --> 0:08:23.760 tends to be sort of the the easy association that 0:08:23.800 --> 0:08:27.000 people make when you just hear plastic surgeon on TV. Oh, 0:08:27.040 --> 0:08:29.280 she went to the plastic surgeon's office. That means she 0:08:29.320 --> 0:08:32.640 had something superficial and unnecessary done. But plastic surgery is 0:08:32.640 --> 0:08:36.199 bigger than that, much bigger. And uh, you know, as 0:08:36.200 --> 0:08:38.599 you could said that he has he's worked on reconstructing 0:08:38.600 --> 0:08:42.920 faces um winded warrior winded warrior causes, right, So we're 0:08:42.920 --> 0:08:47.880 talking about catastrophic poly trauma. So if you're in if 0:08:47.920 --> 0:08:50.720 you're a soldier and you have undergone this trauma, what 0:08:50.880 --> 0:08:53.840 that means is that you have so many various problems 0:08:53.880 --> 0:08:58.160 going on um that you can't necessarily find a solution 0:08:58.200 --> 0:09:01.160 to all of those injuries. But what Dr Rosen can 0:09:01.240 --> 0:09:03.920 do is he can fashion a new knows um. But 0:09:04.000 --> 0:09:06.240 he can't restore that soldier's sense of smell, he can 0:09:06.240 --> 0:09:08.840 at least give some sort of normalcy back to that person. 0:09:09.400 --> 0:09:12.120 So that's a lot of work that he does there. Um. 0:09:12.200 --> 0:09:15.360 He also is working on healthcare reform that this is 0:09:15.400 --> 0:09:18.400 really interesting. This is in the form of cybercare. He 0:09:18.480 --> 0:09:22.040 argues that our hospital system is just uh, you know, 0:09:22.120 --> 0:09:24.880 an outgrowth of the Civil War. In other words, it 0:09:24.920 --> 0:09:27.920 was set up to administer to a huge amount of 0:09:28.440 --> 0:09:31.040 massive casualties. And he's saying that that's just not the 0:09:31.040 --> 0:09:33.720 way that the world works today. And he is helping 0:09:33.720 --> 0:09:36.800 to revamp the national healthcare system Vietnam using cell phones 0:09:36.840 --> 0:09:41.400 and laptops to link clinics, hospitals, and rural physicians. So 0:09:41.559 --> 0:09:43.600 this guy is a renaissance man. And like I said, 0:09:43.640 --> 0:09:47.000 he's a big thinker, which is extended over to his 0:09:47.200 --> 0:09:52.960 ideas about what we can do in terms of improving, 0:09:53.800 --> 0:09:56.640 not just augmenting, I should say, but really heightening our 0:09:56.760 --> 0:10:00.080 senses as a human being, in augmenting our experiences as 0:10:00.360 --> 0:10:02.679 a human being. Yeah, he's an amazing thinker. And then 0:10:02.720 --> 0:10:06.079 he really he's the cliche, you know, thinks outside the box. 0:10:06.160 --> 0:10:08.960 He is the he's a bit of a rebel. He's 0:10:09.080 --> 0:10:13.680 he's questioning authority and questioning sort of normal approaches to 0:10:13.760 --> 0:10:16.160 things all the time. And you see that with with 0:10:16.160 --> 0:10:20.000 with various gifted minds out there. You know, it's it's 0:10:20.000 --> 0:10:23.320 not merely that they work really hard and are just 0:10:24.160 --> 0:10:28.280 geniuses within the confines of their profession, within the confines 0:10:28.320 --> 0:10:31.000 of their their role in society, but they actually think 0:10:31.000 --> 0:10:35.600 beyond the typical constraints. It's true. Like, for instance, he 0:10:35.679 --> 0:10:38.360 says that a salamander can regenerate an arm in forty 0:10:38.360 --> 0:10:41.040 two days, So he says, somewhere in your own genome 0:10:41.120 --> 0:10:44.080 that ability still exists. He says, why can't we go 0:10:44.120 --> 0:10:46.560 ahead and find that figure that out so that we 0:10:46.600 --> 0:10:49.680 can regenerate a whole limb for ourselves. And he says, 0:10:49.720 --> 0:10:51.440 we can do it. It's just a matter of you know, 0:10:51.520 --> 0:10:54.840 twenty to fifty years to coming up with that. Um 0:10:55.000 --> 0:10:57.880 so you know, he also looks at soldiers again who 0:10:57.920 --> 0:11:01.840 have had those catastrophic A traumas, and he says, why 0:11:02.120 --> 0:11:06.000 can't we use a whole body prophesis, like you know 0:11:06.080 --> 0:11:09.000 that's made out an exo skeleton. Um. You know, obviously 0:11:09.120 --> 0:11:12.160 cost is a factor in perception because it's not to 0:11:13.559 --> 0:11:17.040 it's not too normal. They see someone trapesing through a hallway, 0:11:17.080 --> 0:11:19.400 who's you know, in case in excess skeleton. But he's 0:11:19.400 --> 0:11:21.440 got these ideas of how to make it work for 0:11:21.679 --> 0:11:25.199 humans and how to, as I said, augment the experiences 0:11:25.240 --> 0:11:26.760 for people and make it better. Yeah, he wants to 0:11:26.760 --> 0:11:28.120 make it better. He wants to fix it. You see 0:11:28.120 --> 0:11:30.599 that both in in healthcare reform, as you mentioned, but 0:11:30.640 --> 0:11:33.440 also but more importantly, in the human body. There's a 0:11:33.440 --> 0:11:36.280 great quote from that article that I think really sums 0:11:36.320 --> 0:11:39.720 up a lot about Rosen's outlook on not just plastic 0:11:39.720 --> 0:11:43.120 surgery but life. He says, you know, I'm really proud 0:11:43.160 --> 0:11:45.640 of that face. And he's talking about some facial reconstruction 0:11:45.679 --> 0:11:47.960 that he performed on an individual who lost a lot 0:11:48.000 --> 0:11:50.320 of it to cancer. Because I'm really proud of that face. 0:11:50.360 --> 0:11:53.040 I didn't follow any protocol. There's no textbook to tell 0:11:53.040 --> 0:11:55.360 you how to fashion of face eaten away by cancer. 0:11:55.840 --> 0:11:59.079 Plastic surgery is the intersection of art and science. It's 0:11:59.080 --> 0:12:02.400 the intersection of the surgeons imagination with human flesh, and 0:12:02.480 --> 0:12:06.520 human flesh is infinitely malleable. People say cosmetic surgery is 0:12:06.520 --> 0:12:09.400 frivolous boobs and noses, but it's so much more than that. 0:12:09.440 --> 0:12:11.840 The body is a conduit for the soul, at least 0:12:11.880 --> 0:12:15.120 historically speaking. When you change what you look like, you 0:12:15.240 --> 0:12:18.959 change who you are so well, and it doesn't that 0:12:19.040 --> 0:12:20.840 kind of speak to a lot of what we've talked 0:12:20.840 --> 0:12:24.360 about in the podcast in terms of studies having to 0:12:24.440 --> 0:12:27.280 do with psychology the whole, like you you know, take 0:12:27.320 --> 0:12:29.000 it till you make it, or you know, if you 0:12:29.040 --> 0:12:33.960 assume a powerful posture, then your body responds physiologically, So 0:12:34.840 --> 0:12:37.200 you know, a lot of what he's saying is is 0:12:37.280 --> 0:12:39.959 there's a truth there that if you can change yourself 0:12:40.000 --> 0:12:45.360 in that way, then certainly physically and mentally, things will follow. Okay, 0:12:45.480 --> 0:12:47.920 So let's get into some of his really fun post 0:12:48.000 --> 0:12:51.080 humanist dreams for the human body. Yeah, because he again 0:12:51.080 --> 0:12:55.360 he's all about making the changes necessary, arguably necessary in 0:12:55.360 --> 0:13:00.280 some cases to make us better beings. For instance, ocular 0:13:00.320 --> 0:13:03.679 implants new rods for the eyes to give a super 0:13:03.720 --> 0:13:07.960 binocular vision. UM soldier implants like, this is great a 0:13:08.000 --> 0:13:11.920 nose flash light because you know your nose is just there. 0:13:12.280 --> 0:13:15.960 You know it's important for breathing. But you know optics 0:13:16.440 --> 0:13:19.480 to optic technology grow smaller and smaller, why not have 0:13:19.600 --> 0:13:21.880 a light up there? Imagine you sort of you know, 0:13:21.960 --> 0:13:25.280 you click one nostril and then a light shines out 0:13:25.320 --> 0:13:27.600 the other nose and you it's perfect for reading. It's 0:13:27.640 --> 0:13:29.760 a great idea. Really, now, I can just see eight 0:13:29.840 --> 0:13:31.760 year old really having fun with that when they blow 0:13:31.840 --> 0:13:35.400 their nose. Yeah. Yeah, like light flashes, like really bright 0:13:35.480 --> 0:13:37.720 light every time you sneeze. But it's stuff like that, 0:13:37.760 --> 0:13:39.560 like when you say it, like we're even laughing because 0:13:39.559 --> 0:13:41.800 it's ridiculous. It's so different from what we're used to. 0:13:42.000 --> 0:13:44.320 But Rosen is the kind of guy that says, no, 0:13:44.559 --> 0:13:47.400 why are you laughing? Because this is actually really practical. Right, 0:13:47.440 --> 0:13:49.439 he's saying, in a military sense, why wouldn't you want 0:13:49.440 --> 0:13:53.520 your soldier outfitted with us? Right? Because it makes perfect sense. Um. 0:13:53.600 --> 0:13:56.360 Cochlear implants, of course, are already in existence, but what 0:13:56.440 --> 0:13:59.520 he is suggesting is that you have cochlear implants that 0:14:00.000 --> 0:14:04.319 the hands are hearing, essentially giving us far superior auditory powers, 0:14:04.440 --> 0:14:08.000 so we'd be able to detect things miles away, again 0:14:08.080 --> 0:14:12.599 becoming superhuman. And uh, because, as we've mentioned before, the 0:14:12.920 --> 0:14:15.560 senses that we used to perceive the world are in 0:14:16.080 --> 0:14:20.640 varying degrees limited or extremely limited even compared to other animals. Um. 0:14:20.680 --> 0:14:22.960 You know, it's like the mantis shrimp, which sees and 0:14:23.240 --> 0:14:26.360 all this vast array of colors that we can scarcely imagine. 0:14:26.360 --> 0:14:28.200 We've talked about when we're talking about bats, how it's 0:14:28.360 --> 0:14:31.040 almost impossible for us to really imagine what it's like 0:14:31.120 --> 0:14:34.000 to to quote unquote see the world as a bat. 0:14:34.800 --> 0:14:39.200 So instead of being limited by this this world that 0:14:39.200 --> 0:14:42.640 we've painted in just a few different colors, he's saying, 0:14:42.640 --> 0:14:44.760 why don't we paint the world in more colors? Why 0:14:44.760 --> 0:14:48.000 don't we update our our machinery so that we can 0:14:48.200 --> 0:14:51.720 paint a more brilliant world. You know, that's an interesting 0:14:51.880 --> 0:14:56.240 concept to think about when, especially in the U. I 0:14:56.280 --> 0:15:00.320 guess in the context of how we are bombard did 0:15:00.800 --> 0:15:02.840 with stimuli these days, and we've talked about this and 0:15:03.040 --> 0:15:06.600 the multitasking episodes quite a bit, so I wonder if 0:15:07.200 --> 0:15:11.720 if doing that, if sort of upping your experience of 0:15:11.800 --> 0:15:14.960 that stimuli would would make sense in this sort of 0:15:15.040 --> 0:15:18.320 new world where you're getting thrown things all the time. 0:15:18.400 --> 0:15:20.040 So if you can, other words, if you can kind 0:15:20.040 --> 0:15:21.800 of tune in a little bit more, things are a 0:15:21.840 --> 0:15:24.400 little bit louder, things are a little bit brighter. Does 0:15:24.440 --> 0:15:28.480 that make sense for the modern human mind? Yeah, sort 0:15:28.480 --> 0:15:31.480 of opening ended question there, But I wanted to point 0:15:31.480 --> 0:15:34.120 out that Rosen is also a fan of equo location 0:15:34.160 --> 0:15:37.840 implants and fins fins, Yes, why not? I mean it 0:15:38.200 --> 0:15:40.040 comes down to a lot of you know, biomimicry. If 0:15:40.040 --> 0:15:41.880 you want to see how to swim, look for it. 0:15:41.920 --> 0:15:44.960 Look at an animal that has evolved over the course 0:15:45.000 --> 0:15:48.120 of millions and millions of years to be an incredible swimmer. 0:15:48.760 --> 0:15:50.200 That's what you need to do. And that we do 0:15:50.280 --> 0:15:52.560 that to a certain extent, and looking at the shark 0:15:52.640 --> 0:15:56.320 skin and then adapting that into swimwear. Um. But he's 0:15:56.640 --> 0:15:59.680 talking about taking it even even further, and of course 0:15:59.800 --> 0:16:03.040 his pet project, his pet thought experiment. I guess you 0:16:03.080 --> 0:16:06.440 could say surgical wings, because this is really where his 0:16:06.560 --> 0:16:10.880 engineering brain meets his his his reconstructive brain and brushes 0:16:10.960 --> 0:16:13.560 up against the brain of mad science for sure, But 0:16:13.760 --> 0:16:15.400 it is important to think of it as as a 0:16:15.440 --> 0:16:18.960 thought experiment. Um, he is not trying to do this 0:16:19.480 --> 0:16:22.680 or anything that we know of, uh, but but it 0:16:22.760 --> 0:16:24.840 is a great thought experience for just what are you know? 0:16:24.920 --> 0:16:26.640 What are we willing to do? What can we do? 0:16:26.840 --> 0:16:29.920 And why are we why do we feel weird about 0:16:29.960 --> 0:16:32.040 going into some of these areas? Like for instance, so 0:16:32.080 --> 0:16:34.840 one of the examples he brings up just in plastic surgery, 0:16:34.840 --> 0:16:37.080 and one, I mean he brings it up. He brings 0:16:37.080 --> 0:16:40.240 it up at conferences because this this dude has been 0:16:40.280 --> 0:16:43.960 an amazing figure in plastic surgery. He travels all over 0:16:44.000 --> 0:16:46.600 the world, speaks a big conferences. He's an influential character. 0:16:46.800 --> 0:16:48.680 So he's not just his voice out on the fringe. 0:16:48.720 --> 0:16:53.000 He's a leading figure. Um, So he brought up for instance, 0:16:53.080 --> 0:16:55.680 you have a man walks into the surgeon's office and 0:16:55.720 --> 0:16:59.080 he has an extra thumb. Um, he's then he is 0:16:59.120 --> 0:17:01.880 a doctor is allowed to take that thumb off. But 0:17:02.200 --> 0:17:03.760 but if a person comes in and says, hey, I 0:17:03.840 --> 0:17:06.840 would like an extra thumb, then he can't. He can't 0:17:06.840 --> 0:17:09.800 do that. That's that's just completely crazy. And then nobody 0:17:09.880 --> 0:17:12.560 adds extra thumbs to people. But he was saying that 0:17:12.600 --> 0:17:14.640 he there was one person that who was I would 0:17:14.680 --> 0:17:18.600 give a waiter server and had an extra thumb and 0:17:18.600 --> 0:17:22.159 it actually aided that person in their job. This is 0:17:22.160 --> 0:17:24.400 an actual person with the second thumb. And he was saying, well, 0:17:24.440 --> 0:17:27.520 that that was helping that person out. So, yeah, why 0:17:27.600 --> 0:17:31.400 is it beyond the pail to add extra digits? Yeah? 0:17:31.440 --> 0:17:35.199 And then there's also the breast uh example that he 0:17:35.240 --> 0:17:37.320 brings up, um, And this is he brought this up 0:17:37.320 --> 0:17:39.280 when people were pressing him on the wing issue because 0:17:39.280 --> 0:17:41.400 he'd mentioned it before, and then at a conference some 0:17:41.600 --> 0:17:43.320 people who were kind of you know, they're a little 0:17:43.359 --> 0:17:44.920 freaked out by this, and they're saying, would you really 0:17:44.960 --> 0:17:47.800 do that? Would you really give somebody wings? Or would 0:17:47.800 --> 0:17:49.800 you give somebody, you know, lizard skin? Would you really 0:17:49.840 --> 0:17:51.720 do any of these crazy things? And so he's bringing 0:17:51.760 --> 0:17:54.680 up various examples to to make his his point. And 0:17:54.680 --> 0:17:57.280 he pointed out that that there was a lady that 0:17:57.320 --> 0:18:01.200 he'd come across that was the need of breast reconstruction 0:18:01.240 --> 0:18:07.200 and she wanted blue areolas and have anything to say 0:18:07.240 --> 0:18:09.360 about that, but he said, well, you know what's wrong 0:18:09.400 --> 0:18:12.440 with that? Um? You know what why not. If the 0:18:12.480 --> 0:18:15.000 person wants to have blue areolas, let him have blue areolas. 0:18:15.040 --> 0:18:17.359 How is that different from a lot of the things 0:18:17.359 --> 0:18:19.200 we do to our bodies? You know, for some reason, 0:18:19.480 --> 0:18:21.880 of all the things that have been said on this podcast, 0:18:22.119 --> 0:18:25.480 that's the one thing that made me Bush don't ask 0:18:25.520 --> 0:18:28.479 me why, um, you know, And it's stuff like this 0:18:28.560 --> 0:18:31.000 I think that makes people sort of look at him 0:18:31.000 --> 0:18:33.080 a little sideways. But the fact of the matter, as 0:18:33.119 --> 0:18:35.520 I said, this is someone who is an absolute expert 0:18:35.560 --> 0:18:39.480 in his field and steeped in the technology. He's on 0:18:39.520 --> 0:18:42.760 the advisory panel for the Navy as well as NASA. 0:18:43.280 --> 0:18:45.760 His insights on human machine interfaces brought him to the 0:18:45.800 --> 0:18:48.399 attention of the Department of Defense here in the States, 0:18:48.960 --> 0:18:52.879 and they've sought his views on virtual reality, future warfare, 0:18:53.080 --> 0:18:56.840 and bio terrorism. So people want his brain, they want 0:18:56.880 --> 0:18:58.960 to know what's going on and rumbling around in that 0:18:59.000 --> 0:19:02.680 brain is blue aery, aerials and uh, you know, nose 0:19:02.720 --> 0:19:06.320 flashlights and surgical wings. Yeah, because again he's one of 0:19:06.320 --> 0:19:08.840 these guys that he thinks or sees something in the 0:19:08.880 --> 0:19:11.399 world and it's it's like it instantly, the wheels are turning, 0:19:11.440 --> 0:19:14.600 like he doesn't take anything for Granted, he thinks about 0:19:14.640 --> 0:19:17.919 it's possible applications, possible ways to improve it, like, for instance, 0:19:18.320 --> 0:19:22.600 with rhinoplastic which often is you know, typically about correcting 0:19:22.680 --> 0:19:26.200 rebuilding the nose, or or making cosmetic adjustments to the nose. 0:19:26.480 --> 0:19:28.240 But he's saying that that hasn't even reached his full 0:19:28.240 --> 0:19:30.600 potential that we could we can improve upon the nose 0:19:30.640 --> 0:19:33.560 and then ultimately improvements that we make to the human 0:19:33.600 --> 0:19:37.000 body need not be a surgical in nature, but a 0:19:37.080 --> 0:19:40.480 genetic in nature. Okay, so he's talking about gaming the 0:19:40.480 --> 0:19:43.440 body now through genetics as opposed to plastic surgery or 0:19:43.440 --> 0:19:47.800 getting married eventually. Yeah. Um, Now again you have to 0:19:47.840 --> 0:19:50.080 kind of take his perspective on a little bit if 0:19:50.080 --> 0:19:51.760 this seems odd to you. I mean, again, here's someone 0:19:51.800 --> 0:19:54.840 who's doing five hundred procedures a year. And keep in 0:19:54.880 --> 0:19:57.480 mind that in two thousand and ten, Americans spent over 0:19:57.600 --> 0:20:02.879 ten billion dollars on cosmetic surgery. So if you're in 0:20:02.920 --> 0:20:04.760 this field and you see this over and over again, 0:20:04.800 --> 0:20:07.840 and your futurist you can't help but sit there and say, 0:20:07.880 --> 0:20:10.600 how can I actually improve upon this process? And if 0:20:10.600 --> 0:20:13.520 this is the way that humanity is going, why not 0:20:13.640 --> 0:20:18.200 make it really incredible. Why not chase after the idea 0:20:18.280 --> 0:20:20.919 of flight, which is something that humans, you know, have 0:20:21.000 --> 0:20:24.680 always secretly or not so secretly wanted for themselves. Yeah, 0:20:24.840 --> 0:20:27.040 so he's at this conference again, people keep pressing in 0:20:27.320 --> 0:20:29.800 on this issue, and finally he does answer. Because he's 0:20:29.800 --> 0:20:31.800 not the kind of guy that's gonna not tell you 0:20:31.840 --> 0:20:34.679 exactly what he thinks about a topic. He said, and 0:20:34.720 --> 0:20:36.920 they said, would you perform this surgery on someone if 0:20:37.119 --> 0:20:39.120 they want the blue arial the one? No, I think 0:20:39.119 --> 0:20:41.760 he was talking about wings in this case. Yeah, I'm 0:20:41.760 --> 0:20:44.280 just still stuck on hypothetically, and we'll get into the 0:20:44.320 --> 0:20:47.159 mechanics possible mechanics of this surgery in a bet that 0:20:47.200 --> 0:20:50.160 he said, yes, I would. I can certainly see why 0:20:50.240 --> 0:20:52.960 we don't devote research money to it. I can see 0:20:53.000 --> 0:20:55.000 why the n i H would fund work on breast 0:20:55.040 --> 0:20:56.840 cancer over this. But I don't have a problem with 0:20:56.880 --> 0:20:58.879 altering the human form. We do it all the time. 0:20:59.200 --> 0:21:02.280 It's only are you Dao Christian conservatism that makes us 0:21:02.320 --> 0:21:05.040 think this is wrong? Who here doesn't try to send 0:21:05.040 --> 0:21:06.960