Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind from how Stuff
Speaker 1: Works dot com. Hey this is Stuff to Blow your Mind.
Speaker 1: My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Julie Douglas. Julie.
Speaker 1: There is a book I read a little while back
Speaker 1: and it's referencing the title to this podcast, Um, The
Speaker 1: Werewolf Principle by Clifford D. Simmic, and uh, I found
Speaker 1: it really interesting. It's not perhaps not Simmac's best work.
Speaker 1: He's and he's probably best known for a book called City,
Speaker 1: which one Hugo Award. But it's kind of like they
Speaker 1: came up to the Clifford, you know, really established a
Speaker 1: sci fi dude, and they said, hey, we want you
Speaker 1: to write, um a novel about wherewolves from space? And
Speaker 1: then he set out and like wrote the most intelligent,
Speaker 1: interesting take on that concept possible. Of course, instead of
Speaker 1: it just being werewolves landing and running around howling it things, um,
Speaker 1: it involved all yeah yeah, which gets into the interesting
Speaker 1: argument that I've always wondered. It's like, what if what
Speaker 1: would happen to be a a werewolful handed on the moon?
Speaker 1: Would they be aware a wolf all the time? Would
Speaker 1: they be affected by what the Earth was doing? Would
Speaker 1: they be howling all the time. Yeah, yeah, interesting. But
Speaker 1: but the Clifford, the Simcs, the whole take was that
Speaker 1: he decided to make this a person who had been
Speaker 1: engineered to adapt to different environments and sent off into space.
Speaker 1: So he goes to if you were to land on Mars,
Speaker 1: his body would rapidly change so that he could, you know,
Speaker 1: live on Mars um et cetera. And anyway, he's returned
Speaker 1: to Earth and he's he keeps changing into these previous forms,
Speaker 1: and that's the basics. There's also something really like that,
Speaker 1: like humans live in houses that can fly around and there,
Speaker 1: and they're brownies like little um creatures that live in
Speaker 1: the woods. So isn't he like two hundred years old
Speaker 1: or something by the time he returns. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: so he's got a he's got a lot of living. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but it's a it's such a forming but at hard
Speaker 1: it's such a fascinating concept because, uh were we still
Speaker 1: talk about terraforming a lot. We talk about I mean,
Speaker 1: one of the basic models of space flight is let's
Speaker 1: take a little bubble of our environment and let's blast
Speaker 1: it up into into orbit. Because we are ultimately we're
Speaker 1: creatures that can that are that have evolved to live
Speaker 1: only in a very small region of our own atmosphere,
Speaker 1: just a small portion of the Earth's crust. Because of
Speaker 1: the crust also, some definitions includes the atmosphere. So so
Speaker 1: we're only really supposed to live in this one little section.
Speaker 1: But we keep pushing the boundaries. You know. We want
Speaker 1: to climb out everest. We want to to to live
Speaker 1: in space, and then we want to have our little
Speaker 1: environment when we're in orbit. We want to turn Mars
Speaker 1: into Arizona. Uh, you know, and uh and and and
Speaker 1: and and you see these fantastic science visions, um, where
Speaker 1: we've gone out and done that to all these different
Speaker 1: worlds where we we just find, you know, exoplanet after exoplanet,
Speaker 1: change it into Florida, change it into Vacationville, right right, Um,
Speaker 1: we're looking at you, Richard Branson. But and then you think, okay, well,
Speaker 1: I mean fish, they're not doing this. They're not saying, wow,
Speaker 1: I wish I could live on land, right and have
Speaker 1: these gills. You know, how do I come up with
Speaker 1: some sort of lung situation here? Right? They they ended
Speaker 1: up evolving, adapting over time and uh, reaching the point
Speaker 1: where they where something could not return to the water,
Speaker 1: and so you you run into this interesting argument of
Speaker 1: what should we be doing to evolved to our setting
Speaker 1: and as opposed to changing our setting to to to
Speaker 1: adhere to our demands? Right, And of course the astronaut
Speaker 1: is like the perfect specimen to look at this whole
Speaker 1: argument with, right, Yeah, yeah, it's because they're not very
Speaker 1: ideal in terms of trying to actually explore space, right
Speaker 1: and nothing against them, yet our humanness getting in the way. Well,
Speaker 1: that's actually a good place to start, like what is
Speaker 1: the ideal astronaut given what we currently know about you
Speaker 1: know about about sending people into orbit? Um. One of
Speaker 1: the more interesting things is that you want somebody with
Speaker 1: ideal methane output? Of course. Yeah. And of course, for
Speaker 1: I think we all know what I'm talking I'm talking
Speaker 1: about farts of course in space. And when you see ideal,
Speaker 1: I think you mean minimum minimum um. Yeah, because at
Speaker 1: first of the methane is uh, it's flammable, So you
Speaker 1: don't want you have a closed environment. You don't want
Speaker 1: like a lot of gas going off in there and
Speaker 1: potentially catching on fire while guys are carrying off you know, experiments, etcetera.
Speaker 1: Plus this the whole psychological thing. If you're going to
Speaker 1: be stuck in a spacecraft for six months, you don't
Speaker 1: necessarily want to be gas and people out right right right.
Speaker 1: There's a gavin name of Edwin Murphy, and he did
Speaker 1: some he conducted some research on this. Uh and this
Speaker 1: is this is really interesting. It was it was there's
Speaker 1: a whole chapter dealing with with this topic. And Mary
Speaker 1: Roach's U latest book, UM about Mars and the space
Speaker 1: the space program. So Murphy used an experimental bean meal
Speaker 1: and he fed it to volunteers who had been rigged
Speaker 1: to a rectal catheter uh to uh and and to
Speaker 1: to measure how much gas was going out. Uh and
Speaker 1: he was he was interested in the individual differences, not
Speaker 1: just the the overall volume, but in you know, the
Speaker 1: percentage of of methane in the game in the the
Speaker 1: the flattest. I believe it's the technical term for it,
Speaker 1: because if you're writing a scientific you know, um, discussion
Speaker 1: on something you don't want to just you know, keep
Speaker 1: saying the farts art doesn't cut it and search cheese
Speaker 1: joke here. Yeah, uh so, um, but what he found
Speaker 1: it was really interesting. Uh. He found out that about
Speaker 1: half the population doesn't produce methane in there. Um. I
Speaker 1: thought that was incredible because it was something about like
Speaker 1: their their bacterial flora. Yeah, it's and it's great, and
Speaker 1: it's important to know. The methane itself is like a
Speaker 1: it's not methane doesn't stink. There are other things that
Speaker 1: work in one's digestion decides methane production. Um. So it's
Speaker 1: not something where you can where where these people are
Speaker 1: not creating or uh you know, emanating or express expressing flattist,
Speaker 1: though he did apparently claim that one he found one
Speaker 1: individual who was quote flattist free, which just sounds I
Speaker 1: just I don't I didn't even think that was possible.
Speaker 1: I mean, can you imagine, I mean you could put
Speaker 1: that on your resume. Yeah, I mean people would or
Speaker 1: would they hate you? I don't know, I would kind of.
Speaker 1: I would feel like like if someone if I was
Speaker 1: in a position to hire somebody to be like, oh,
Speaker 1: by the way, I'm flattist free, I'd be like, well,
Speaker 1: I'm not hiring you, jerk. You're gonna just make us
Speaker 1: look bad. Yeah, yeah you're right. Yeah we could never
Speaker 1: blame anything on you. Yeah, I just can't. It would
Speaker 1: happen in like the dude we just said there, all
Speaker 1: smug like and just it would be horrible. Ye, but
Speaker 1: you could always be an astronaut. Yes, being an astronaut
Speaker 1: would be great because because there wouldn't be any concerned
Speaker 1: with methane at all. Um. So, Murphy's whole argument was, Hey, NASA,
Speaker 1: you need to focus on getting astronauts who have the
Speaker 1: proper um um flattest output for space you want. You
Speaker 1: want people that are that are producing the less hostile
Speaker 1: flattest and only those people. Everybody else you're you're out
Speaker 1: of the pool. Yeah. And then NASA was like, no,
Speaker 1: we're just gonna not serve beans, that's right, No cabbage,
Speaker 1: no broccoli. I think we're going to get the go
Speaker 1: the easier route. Yeah. And and actually this guy to um,
Speaker 1: if I understand this correctly from Mary Ridges book, he
Speaker 1: was like a flattest researcher. Like he was employed as
Speaker 1: a flattest reacher researcher, and only a flattest researcher. This
Speaker 1: was his life work. Yes, yeah, so you can imagine
Speaker 1: why he took it so seriously and and didn't he
Speaker 1: even uh insert the rectal cathe Yes, she actually talked
Speaker 1: about that the rectal catheter. Yeah, I mean it's we're
Speaker 1: we're laughing, but it's you know, it's a it's an
Speaker 1: important area of study if you're talking about sending guys
Speaker 1: up in gals up into space in this little, a
Speaker 1: tiny environment. But it's but this is cost It's also
Speaker 1: like one of the first like real you know moments
Speaker 1: like which way are we gonna go? Are we gonna
Speaker 1: gonna change our environment? We're gonna change us? And this
Speaker 1: was a chance to not really change us, but to
Speaker 1: you know, selectively choose. And I mean granted, there there
Speaker 1: are you know, minimal requirements for for astronauts and and
Speaker 1: uh members of any you know, space program, stuff like um,
Speaker 1: you know, you know, eyesight, blood pressure height, um. You
Speaker 1: know obviously that they tend to go for people who
Speaker 1: have at least a bachelor's degree and some sort of
Speaker 1: science or yeah. So and and you have to have
Speaker 1: kind of a happy, go lucky disposition, right. Yeah, And
Speaker 1: even like space tourism, most of the models we're looking at,
Speaker 1: even the ones like you know, even like the Branson's
Speaker 1: whole whole space tourm tourism deal, as as much as
Speaker 1: they're going to try and cater that to to make
Speaker 1: make it available to everybody. Uh, the certain people are
Speaker 1: just not going to be eligible to go into space.
Speaker 1: So people who have a fear fly right, I think,
Speaker 1: are going to be cut off the list. Yeah. But
Speaker 1: but this is a case where where NASA could could
Speaker 1: either have have have said, yes, we're gonna go after
Speaker 1: the people who who have minimal flat us you know
Speaker 1: in our methane producers. Um, and they said no, we're
Speaker 1: gonna change the meal plant. So it's so practically so
Speaker 1: so other areas that the Mary roach brings up. Bone mass,
Speaker 1: of course is a big deal. You're gonna lose bone
Speaker 1: mass if the more you're in a in a in
Speaker 1: a microgravity environment. Yeah. And actually that I mean it's
Speaker 1: the staff that I saw in that was astronauts lose
Speaker 1: one to two percent of their bone mass for each
Speaker 1: month they spend in space. That's quite a bit. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And uh and and but but the interesting thing is
Speaker 1: that black women, for instance, are seven to percent denser
Speaker 1: in their bones than than than white or Asian women.
Speaker 1: And uh, of course Mary didn't have the have the
Speaker 1: data for men, just for the women. And I assume
Speaker 1: that's tied to osteoporosis research. But but conceivably um black
Speaker 1: men would also have better bone density than wider Asian men.
Speaker 1: So so it ends up creating an interesting argument there
Speaker 1: should we only be using um minimal flat us black astronauts,
Speaker 1: you know, why not? Why not? Yeah, if they're they're
Speaker 1: gonna be more suited for space. And you can take
Speaker 1: this even one step further, and then it's that maybe
Speaker 1: they should all be deaf because because you know, if
Speaker 1: anybody's ever had motion sickness, be it on a boat,
Speaker 1: in the car, etcetera, you know, it's you get kind
Speaker 1: of nauseous. Next thing, you know, you're throwing up into
Speaker 1: the into the floorboard of the vehicles, right, And it's
Speaker 1: an inner ear thing. And people used to think it
Speaker 1: was tied to the stomach, but it's not. Yes, tied
Speaker 1: inner ear and uh and and many people argue that
Speaker 1: it's kind of a mistake of evolution because vomitings, as
Speaker 1: much as we may hate it, does serve a number
Speaker 1: of really key functions. You know, you eat something and
Speaker 1: it's bad, it's poisonous, you barf it up, start over
Speaker 1: um and and actually animals that don't vomit I mean
Speaker 1: that becomes a problem because if they eat something they
Speaker 1: should eat a belief horses are like this, Uh, they
Speaker 1: eat something they shouldn't eat, they can't vomit it up.
Speaker 1: It's it's you know, it's more of a it becomes
Speaker 1: a real problem with huge amount of discomfort. Right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: because like with kids, right, if a kid eats something
Speaker 1: they're not supposed to, A child, not a goat. If
Speaker 1: a child eat something that he or she is not
Speaker 1: supposed to, you can always there's the vomiting, right, you
Speaker 1: can give them epicacue or something. Right. Uh. And I'm
Speaker 1: thinking about this too, like this is sort of accident
Speaker 1: of nature, right, because whatever controls our vomiting response is
Speaker 1: near our inner ear function or something along this. I'm sorry,
Speaker 1: I don't have the correct terminology, but I sort of
Speaker 1: scan that remembering. Okay, So that's why we sometimes vomit
Speaker 1: because we're Yeah, but it serves no evolutionary prop prob
Speaker 1: you know, there's no reason for it. It's like I'm
Speaker 1: feeling kind of motion sickness, and my body's like we
Speaker 1: have to vomit now, you know, there's no Yeah, it
Speaker 1: serves no like evolutionary advantage. Um. So the only way
Speaker 1: to act completely get rid of motion sickness is is
Speaker 1: for the human have a non functioning inner ear. And
Speaker 1: uh so you we can see within go for deaf people.
Speaker 1: So all black deaf astronaut crew with minimal flattus, all right,
Speaker 1: I mean it could happen. I guess The problem is
Speaker 1: is that you just keep narrowing the pool to the
Speaker 1: point where it's probably harder and harder to get astronauts
Speaker 1: right unless you create and this is I'm throwing this
Speaker 1: out there is like a future kind of thing, and
Speaker 1: and and kind of a potentially scare eugenics kind of thing.
Speaker 1: But like then you create a breeding program, right, just
Speaker 1: for astronauts, just to encourage the traits. I mean, we
Speaker 1: do it. We've done it with dogs, and of course
Speaker 1: that has some horrible effects and many times. But conceivably,
Speaker 1: it seems to me you could you could have a
Speaker 1: breeding program similar to the you know, like something out
Speaker 1: of Dune where you're just breeding for ideal astronauts. And
Speaker 1: and so it's like a genetic, you know, hereditary thing.
Speaker 1: You create an entire cast or subspecies of astronauts. I know,
Speaker 1: and I'm just thinking now, like the Island of Misfits
Speaker 1: and rud Off red nose reindeer in the elf that
Speaker 1: wanted to be a dentist. Like there might be that
Speaker 1: person that's bred to, you know, do this and gets
Speaker 1: you know what, I really want to go to space? Thanks? Yeah,
Speaker 1: but then then you have to sit down with and
Speaker 1: be like like, but dude, listen, listen like you well,
Speaker 1: don't listen, like read the words writing because you're deaf,
Speaker 1: because we bread for that. Uh. You know it's like
Speaker 1: your your death, your bone density is incredible, your you
Speaker 1: have no methane when you when you when you break wind,
Speaker 1: like this is this is for you. But they're like, no,
Speaker 1: I really really want to be an artist, but what
Speaker 1: do you do? Right? This presentation is brought to you
Speaker 1: by Intel Sponsors of Tomorrow. So so there's that that
Speaker 1: viewpoint like what if we so you know, step one,
Speaker 1: we we only choose the people that are ideal for space,
Speaker 1: and then okay, we can take that a step further.
Speaker 1: What if we we bred people for space? Uh? But
Speaker 1: then then the next step is what if we engineered
Speaker 1: people for space? What if we made them um ad
Speaker 1: or made them better, we adapted them for space into
Speaker 1: the cyborg. Yes, um, and like a simple version of
Speaker 1: it would be like if you just made people death
Speaker 1: before we sent him into space, which is kind of horrifying.
Speaker 1: But I'm not sure a lot of people go for that.
Speaker 1: They might, I don't know, but there are a number
Speaker 1: of interesting changes that could that could take place that
Speaker 1: would be less scary, though some of them are pretty scary. Um.
Speaker 1: So let's look get the cyboard and now that this
Speaker 1: is a term that is preloaded these days, because when
Speaker 1: when when I say cyborg, what do you think of? Well,
Speaker 1: I think of the Terminator, but I think he's technically
Speaker 1: he was more of a robot covered with flesh, with flesh.
Speaker 1: Darth Vader. Yeah, I think Darth Vader was pretty cybernetic
Speaker 1: in his state. Um, RoboCop perhaps a cyborg. I'm I'm
Speaker 1: kind of foggy on the explanations in the first two movies,
Speaker 1: but but yeah, you get this idea. It's like a
Speaker 1: human being that has been augmented terrifically or terrifyingly with machines.
Speaker 1: Six million dollar, six million dollar man Is is a
Speaker 1: prime example on the cyborg. Yeah. But but again, this
Speaker 1: is kind of a tern that's been taken by by
Speaker 1: science fiction and and just sort of they run wild
Speaker 1: with it. So now you just think of like man
Speaker 1: with half metal face kind of thing. The term actually
Speaker 1: originates back in nineteen sixty September of nineteen sixty in
Speaker 1: uh an edition of Astronautics, and this was an article
Speaker 1: by men Manfred E. Kleins and Nathan S. Klein UH
Speaker 1: one with a C, the second with a K, and
Speaker 1: it was titled Cyborgs in Space and it's a great read.
Speaker 1: I'll have to throw up a link to it on
Speaker 1: the the accompanying blog post when this podcast comes out. Um,
Speaker 1: but they they may they just made he may they
Speaker 1: make the huge argument that, like here's just a quote
Speaker 1: from it. It It really sums it up. In the past,
Speaker 1: evolution brought about the altering of bodily functions to suit
Speaker 1: different environments. Starting as of now, it will be possible
Speaker 1: to achieve this to some degree with out alteration of
Speaker 1: heredity by suitable biochemical, physiological, and electronic modifications of man's
Speaker 1: existing um bodies. So and so, what I thought was
Speaker 1: kind of cool about this too is that it's not
Speaker 1: necessarily that they felt like they were changing humans, but
Speaker 1: that they were improving humans. So that they could explore more,
Speaker 1: and they could have more independence to to create more
Speaker 1: and to think more if they if they weren't um
Speaker 1: burdened by their own physicality. Right, and you in de
Speaker 1: leading people make the argument that the cyborg has been
Speaker 1: around for ages. Right, the second that we skinned an
Speaker 1: animal and started wearing its fur cyborg. Second with the
Speaker 1: second we strapped a wristwatch to our to our arm
Speaker 1: cyborg dentures exactly, yeah, yeah, how are you going to
Speaker 1: chew you know, throw the denters in? You've augmented the
Speaker 1: individual with technology to better enable them for their environment.
Speaker 1: You've become something more than human. Right and and certainly
Speaker 1: we went into a number of these possibilities on the
Speaker 1: previous uh Accessorizing podcast about you know, if somebody can
Speaker 1: wear flippers, they're gonna they're gonna swim faster. Um. You
Speaker 1: know we we wear about computers, are you know our
Speaker 1: our iPhones? It's like there's there's so much technology. Eyeglasses, contacts, um, lasers.
Speaker 1: These are all examples of something where technology changes the
Speaker 1: person to better suit them for their environment. You may
Speaker 1: think of it it's just your everyday life, but your
Speaker 1: everyday life is here on Earth, But what if the
Speaker 1: everyday life was in space? So clients and client took
Speaker 1: that and then they looked at all the problems facing
Speaker 1: us and trying to exist in space or explore space.
Speaker 1: And I thought that the solutions they came up with
Speaker 1: were incredible. I mean, they're they're really creative, and they're
Speaker 1: really interesting ways to to approach the problem. Yes, And
Speaker 1: I have to tell you though, to like reading this,
Speaker 1: I thought, this is this is so crazy, like this
Speaker 1: is the Madman era. Can you imagine them like sitting
Speaker 1: in a cocktail party saying, well, I've got an idea
Speaker 1: about this whole problem of the lungs in space. Yeah,
Speaker 1: or I mean it reminds me a little bit. In
Speaker 1: Mary Roach's book, she talks about like when you would
Speaker 1: have scientists, the scientists that designed space travel and the
Speaker 1: jock astronauts that would do it, like setting in the
Speaker 1: same room and the and she pointed out how that
Speaker 1: the scientists would be like, you know, we could develop
Speaker 1: a way for the for them to actually eat parts
Speaker 1: of the ship on the return trip from Mars. And
Speaker 1: maybe there's a way we can make it to where
Speaker 1: they can eat eat pooh or something, you know, it's
Speaker 1: like they're actually beginning to think along those lines. And
Speaker 1: the astronauts were like, no, no no, no, no, we're not
Speaker 1: doing that, because it's something about like the scientific mindset
Speaker 1: when you really get into it from a just a
Speaker 1: a pure purely logical problem solving, uh, you know, frame
Speaker 1: of mind. So so there's a hint of that, more
Speaker 1: than a hint of that in this in their original article,
Speaker 1: because it's some of the possibilities are a little uh uh,
Speaker 1: you know, they make you shake your head a little,
Speaker 1: but but but they're but the logic of it is
Speaker 1: is interesting and intive. For instance, they pointed out that
Speaker 1: we could have osmotic pressure pump capsules UM and sensing
Speaker 1: and controlling mechanisms in our bodies like implanted to give
Speaker 1: us medications for blood pressure to give us basically speed
Speaker 1: if we need to to stay awake UM, which you
Speaker 1: know they have various medications on space UM any kind
Speaker 1: of a space mission these days, but you generally have
Speaker 1: to pop the pills yourself. But what if it was
Speaker 1: an automatic thing? And that's one of the huge key
Speaker 1: um aspects of of what was basically cyborg one um
Speaker 1: as outlined in this proposal and that was that we
Speaker 1: were taking these different things and turning them over to
Speaker 1: subconscious functions, right. Yeah, So it wouldn't be like like, oh,
Speaker 1: I'm getting a little sleepy and I've got a high
Speaker 1: pressure job ahead of me. I better uh you know,
Speaker 1: pop some of this uh this NASA speed Uh No,
Speaker 1: you would just it would just kick in ums all
Speaker 1: these sensors that are taking the data and recalibrating your
Speaker 1: body based on that. Yeah. And and other things too
Speaker 1: in this situation, like any radiation medications, uh, pituitary drugs
Speaker 1: to help induce hibernation. That was a big key too,
Speaker 1: because you get into the issue of how are you gonna,
Speaker 1: you know, worry about sending people on long space voyages
Speaker 1: where you know they're gonna be they're going to be
Speaker 1: setting around doing nothing for you know, years. What if
Speaker 1: you could we could learn something from bears. Uh, well,
Speaker 1: bears don't technically hybernate, I remember correctly. It's a different Well,
Speaker 1: I think that they are interested in bears. It's something
Speaker 1: that when they hibernate, they're actually redistributing the calcium back
Speaker 1: to their bones or something nuts like that, that which
Speaker 1: they thought, well, if we could just replicate that in
Speaker 1: humans that would be great. Yeah, yeah, because bears are
Speaker 1: sitting around doing nothing for for the period of their
Speaker 1: of their their winner and app time. But they're not
Speaker 1: they're not losing a bone in their bone in density
Speaker 1: and their their muscles. They can still walk at the
Speaker 1: end of it. The human laid in bed for X
Speaker 1: number of months, he or she would not necessarily be
Speaker 1: able to move when we got it when they woke up.
Speaker 1: And the crux of the problem too that yeah, you
Speaker 1: can you might have muscle atrophy atrophy, but you can
Speaker 1: get your muscles back afterward, right, And you'll have some
Speaker 1: bone loss, but you may not be able to recoup
Speaker 1: actually all of the bone density that you lost in
Speaker 1: particularly um the area in your hips. So if you're
Speaker 1: an astronaut and you reach retirement age, then it's not
Speaker 1: a great scenario for you because that's like the number
Speaker 1: one thing that happens to people are older years is
Speaker 1: that they fall and break their hips. So it's actually
Speaker 1: like a real problem with yeah, yeah, totally. Here a
Speaker 1: few other things from the Cyboard paper. They suggested replacing
Speaker 1: the lung with an inverse fuel cell um, altering your
Speaker 1: intestinal plumbing so that don't love ye waste water goes
Speaker 1: through a filter and right back into your blood, which
Speaker 1: which this is one of those where you can just
Speaker 1: imagine it coming up in the in the Madman air
Speaker 1: where it's like, you know, we're wasting a lot of
Speaker 1: water when we go to the bathroom. I think we
Speaker 1: can we can probably pump that through a filter right
Speaker 1: back into the bloodstream. Yes, yes, And to your point
Speaker 1: too about redistributing the poop so to speak. There's a
Speaker 1: quote from the paper that says sterilization of the gas
Speaker 1: show intestinal tract plus intravenous or direct intra gastric feeding
Speaker 1: could reduce fecal elimination to a minimum, and even this
Speaker 1: might be reutilized. So yes, to your point, they're absolutely
Speaker 1: thinking about this eating your own Well, well that's kind
Speaker 1: of the you're putting the dark spin on it, but
Speaker 1: it'll put the light spin on it, minimizing and hate.
Speaker 1: You know, I'm a dreamer one day eliminating pooping, just
Speaker 1: completely get rid of it. What a world we would
Speaker 1: live in? Um So, I mean that would most assuredly
Speaker 1: be the death knail for the newspaper industry, right um.
Speaker 1: The of course, the whole idea of like a recycling
Speaker 1: like urine. Of course, we're already doing that in space.
Speaker 1: We we have water filtration systems and and and and
Speaker 1: of course everybody has the the idea of the still
Speaker 1: suit from in the Dune novels, you know, the idea
Speaker 1: that you could pee in the suit and it would
Speaker 1: turn back into water. So um, So some of the
Speaker 1: ideas are like I would not be opposed to wearing
Speaker 1: a still suit to you know, or or two or
Speaker 1: someone said hey, this this water was P an hour ago.
Speaker 1: I'd be like, well, you know, a lot of water
Speaker 1: was P at some point, so it's something. But the
Speaker 1: whole idea of like we're now gonna re reroute your
Speaker 1: intestinal system so that the wastewater goes back into your bloodstream,
Speaker 1: that's a little more extreme, but it's an interesting solution. Um.
Speaker 1: Let's see a few other ones here. Enzyme tinkering to
Speaker 1: create anaerobic organisms, in other words, astronauts that don't require
Speaker 1: air or can live in different atmospheres. So that's some
Speaker 1: extreme makeover right there. Yeah, And for those types of solutions,
Speaker 1: I can't help but think, like, how do you recircuit
Speaker 1: that the autonomous part of your body, like your lungs
Speaker 1: that want to breathe like and I do. I think
Speaker 1: that all of their solutions are really fascinating, but that
Speaker 1: to me, those are the st points like that, well,
Speaker 1: the humanness part of our body that wants to do this.
Speaker 1: How do you shut that off? Um? They to go
Speaker 1: back to the inner ear thing and and getting a
Speaker 1: little motion sick and weight blessness. They proposed either draining
Speaker 1: ear fluid or filling them up. So there you go. Um,
Speaker 1: they said, electric slash drug cardiovascular control. They recommended drugs
Speaker 1: to preventing a muscle atrophy, which sounds perfectly reasonable except
Speaker 1: in their in their argument, would probably just happen on
Speaker 1: its own through something implanted in you, which I guess
Speaker 1: you would have to get like a refill pack. You'd
Speaker 1: be kind of like a printer. I'm thinking on your
Speaker 1: back where you have like the cyan and the magenta
Speaker 1: and all this. You'd suddenly you get like a little
Speaker 1: light would show up and it's like, oh, I'm running
Speaker 1: low on anti radiation medicine. Yeah, And I wonder if
Speaker 1: there'd be one that would run out the fastest, you know,
Speaker 1: because it seems like we're always having to replace Cian
Speaker 1: I don't know it's true. Why is that? Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: a weird color. But they also recommended lowering body prey
Speaker 1: shirt to facilitate better facilitate spacewalks, whereas naked spacewalks. I'm
Speaker 1: thinking like, like, basically they're saying we could, we would,
Speaker 1: We would just remove some of the necessary functions of
Speaker 1: a space suit. So that's that's pretty wild. They also
Speaker 1: talked about engineering humans to have a light sensitive, chemically
Speaker 1: regulated system that would change their reflecticity. In other words,
Speaker 1: you wear you know, you wear a black shirt on
Speaker 1: a bright day, you end up being hotter, and more
Speaker 1: of that heat you wear a white shirt reflects. So
Speaker 1: in space you're gonna have situations where where you need
Speaker 1: the heat or don't need the heat, because it can
Speaker 1: make a difference between cooking and freezing. Is this the
Speaker 1: protective plastic sponge clothing they are talking about, yes, which
Speaker 1: sounded a um, sounded like I don't know something in
Speaker 1: my attic right. They also brought up anti basically anti
Speaker 1: space madness medications, anti psychosis medications, because you're gonna be
Speaker 1: up there for a while in this cramp space, you
Speaker 1: don't want your fellow astronauts going crazy. Yeah. Yeah, actually,
Speaker 1: and I noticed that that drugs were huge part of
Speaker 1: the solution here for a lot of this stuff. Yeah,
Speaker 1: which makes sense at the time, but I guess, uh,
Speaker 1: not knowing as much about the side effects now. Well, well,
Speaker 1: the thing is they keep a lot of these type
Speaker 1: medications on the spaceship. I have a blog post on this,
Speaker 1: which will also link to when I get around and
Speaker 1: doing the the accompanying blog post for this. But but
Speaker 1: there are a number of different medications that they keep
Speaker 1: on on the shuttle. So it's not not just the
Speaker 1: idea of using them, but having them where they kick
Speaker 1: in automatically, where it's like you start feeling a little
Speaker 1: crazy and then you're you're the system that's implanted in
Speaker 1: your side like checks you, you know, so you only
Speaker 1: feel crazy for a second. Gosh, I need that now.
Speaker 1: Oh it's interesting this, uh if I remember correctly. This
Speaker 1: features into n M. Banks culture series. We have the
Speaker 1: humans have been augmented over time, so everybody has like
Speaker 1: all these systems that are either subconsciously or consciously control,
Speaker 1: so they can they can feel less psychotic or or
Speaker 1: you know, crank up there. They're sort of caffeine level
Speaker 1: without actually uh, you know, having something to drink. It's
Speaker 1: just actually made me think about this book that I
Speaker 1: just read, Super Sad True Love Story. I believe this
Speaker 1: is the title, And they talk about everybody has something
Speaker 1: called an apparette, which is they wear around their neck
Speaker 1: and it basically will tell you every bit of data
Speaker 1: about yourself, will communicate it to another person, so you
Speaker 1: could feasibly see what my cholesterol level is and you
Speaker 1: know whether or not I need to adjust that or
Speaker 1: if I even have like little nano robots going through
Speaker 1: my blood like cleaning things up, um, as well as
Speaker 1: my credit score. It's good stuff, but just reminded me
Speaker 1: of that. UM. They also talked about prol using pharmaceuticals
Speaker 1: to to have to kick in some prolonged sleep if
Speaker 1: you get injured, like they're all deals. Like you're on
Speaker 1: your return trip from Mars and you, I don't know,
Speaker 1: you step in tote really badly, or more likely you're
Speaker 1: jured on a spacewalk, etcetera. You might need to just
Speaker 1: be able to put that person under for the ride home.
Speaker 1: It might maybe a condition that can't be or an
Speaker 1: injury that can't be treated reasonably on the ship. That
Speaker 1: was another Hallmark, Yeah, putting people inder and um so yeah,
Speaker 1: those are some of the key arguments that they made. Um.
Speaker 1: From there, they went on to do a number of
Speaker 1: other cyborg studies, where each one dealt with another level
Speaker 1: like cyborg to dealt with the manipulation of human emotions
Speaker 1: through mental exercises. Um. And and this this one involved
Speaker 1: like a lot of hypnosis, like like the idea of
Speaker 1: using using hypnosis too, and and I could see like
Speaker 1: like meditation being a big thing too. Yeah. They mentioned
Speaker 1: yoga too in the paper Yoga in space? Can you
Speaker 1: do what here? You will have done more yoga than me.
Speaker 1: Could you do yoga without gravity? Yeah? I assume you
Speaker 1: could do some of the post is right? Um, I
Speaker 1: mean never having done it and then gravity free environment,
Speaker 1: I'm not quite sure, but yeah, Like I mean, I
Speaker 1: don't know. It seems like the different balance imposes would
Speaker 1: be kind of pointless and like down dog. I don't
Speaker 1: know this down dog even count if there's no gravity. No,
Speaker 1: it doesn't, You're right, I mean, I think you'd have
Speaker 1: to have your compression suit on and perhaps you'd have
Speaker 1: to do like partner yoga with one person holding you down.
Speaker 1: This would be interesting if if anybody out there has
Speaker 1: any thoughts and what a micro gravity yoga technique would
Speaker 1: consist of of to ask my yoga teacher. Um, so
Speaker 1: there's that level. Yeah, maybe I will no, I will
Speaker 1: do it. Um maybe alright. So then Cyberg through is
Speaker 1: genetic alterations to enhance the human emotional range. Uh Cyberg
Speaker 1: four deeper genetic changes and then uh Cyberg five. Ultimately
Speaker 1: they were talking about the separation of mind from body. Um,
Speaker 1: which you know, if the ideas like, perhaps instead of
Speaker 1: sending humans to this hostile environment, you fall back on
Speaker 1: the human creation that is best suited for space travel,
Speaker 1: the machine. If we could just simply put our consciousness
Speaker 1: in it or somehow experienced what the machines exp aaran
Speaker 1: sing uh you know, remotely, we could have some sort
Speaker 1: of implant that tied into the robots. Are Yeah, like
Speaker 1: it more or less an extension of what we're already doing, right,
Speaker 1: We just more data. Yeah, we talked a big game,
Speaker 1: you know about sending humans to Mars, but ultimately we
Speaker 1: can send robots there and we can you know, move
Speaker 1: our hands on a keyboard and move things on Mars.
Speaker 1: We can we can look through a screen and see
Speaker 1: what's happening on marsh and is that technology improves And
Speaker 1: I mean it's it's basically like we're there and without
Speaker 1: having to worry about how you're gonna feed this person,
Speaker 1: how are you gonna keep them alive? How are you
Speaker 1: going to you know, tackle the the the huge obstacles
Speaker 1: of engineering a person that can survive this environment. That
Speaker 1: makes sense to me. I mean, to to do this
Speaker 1: sort of uh surveillance that you need, right, to have
Speaker 1: nano robots or robots go out and accumulate all that data.
Speaker 1: The thing that I think about is what what's missing there?
Speaker 1: Is um like the overview effect, right that the reporting
Speaker 1: back of the the human part of it. Yeah. So yes,
Speaker 1: the that we've talked about this before in a podcast
Speaker 1: about overview of fact, that sense of euphoria you get
Speaker 1: in this deeper, better understanding of the planet that you
Speaker 1: live in. Yeah, Like the Grand Canyon example is great.
Speaker 1: Like I've never been to the Grand Canyon. I've only
Speaker 1: seen photos of it. It looks really cool in the photos,
Speaker 1: but everyone will tell you that's been there that the
Speaker 1: photos just don't cut it. That you don't really like
Speaker 1: understand the Grand Canyon until you see it, which which
Speaker 1: I totally buy because I mean, that's that's how seeing anything,
Speaker 1: you know, amazing works. It's like the photo, the video.
Speaker 1: You can really capture a moment or a string of moments,
Speaker 1: but it's not the same as being there. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but then you know, I don't know, I think about that. Yes,
Speaker 1: robots makes so much more sense. But you know, I've
Speaker 1: seems like I've been bringing this up a lot. But
Speaker 1: like the exo skeletons we talked about the military is using,
Speaker 1: you know, is there a way to combine that technology
Speaker 1: as well as the carbon nanotube muscles that they're trying
Speaker 1: to create, to to glomb that onto the human too,
Speaker 1: to again make them more of this um the cyborg
Speaker 1: in reality as opposed to the future that we keep
Speaker 1: pointing to. Yeah. So one of the big questions that
Speaker 1: comes to mind when we talk about all these different
Speaker 1: variations in the cyborg is is that if we change
Speaker 1: humans to live in space or live in another world,
Speaker 1: at what point are they no longer human? You know?
Speaker 1: Like what you know, you get to where you're adding
Speaker 1: a lot of hardware, you're genetically altering somebody, and then
Speaker 1: you're sending them out and is that a human being anymore?
Speaker 1: Is it something else? Is it a subspecies? I don't know.
Speaker 1: Paul Davies of Study has actually said that biological intelligence
Speaker 1: is only a transitory phenomenon, a fleeting phase in the
Speaker 1: evolution of the universe. And so his feeling is that
Speaker 1: the supplies to humans and and if there are indeed
Speaker 1: in uh, extraterrest extraterrestrial life out there, that it's uh,
Speaker 1: it's got to be some sort of machine hybrid mm hmm. So,
Speaker 1: and this is an idea that's come up before. Is
Speaker 1: aliens Is these more evolved um replications or iterations of
Speaker 1: ourselves that are the sort of machine cyborg being. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and uh, and it falls back in line with what
Speaker 1: we were talking about earlier, Like it comes to like
Speaker 1: the like the like say Cyborg five was talking about, uh,
Speaker 1: like basically machines with human intellects. You know, it becomes
Speaker 1: more of a I mean just again, just look at
Speaker 1: what we've sent out. We sent machines. Machines have been
Speaker 1: the first to land on on on on Mars, on
Speaker 1: on the moon, the first I'm going to be the
Speaker 1: first to leave the Solar System. So, so's the definition.
Speaker 1: Then if the brain is intact, then we're still human.
Speaker 1: But well, I think we would kind of like that
Speaker 1: to be the case. But again, we're not just our brains.
Speaker 1: It's like we're you know, we're we're a much more
Speaker 1: complicated system than that. That's right to bring up the gut.
Speaker 1: So anyway, it's an interesting question at what point, at
Speaker 1: what point do do have At what point would we
Speaker 1: not be human anymore? At what point are we already
Speaker 1: not human? Um? There's a stat that and this is
Speaker 1: ninety seven which which argued that that ten of the
Speaker 1: human population was already a cyborg, just counting like everything
Speaker 1: from you know, pacemakers to prosthetics. Two denture's that there
Speaker 1: was just a huge, huge population segment of the population
Speaker 1: that was already not fully human. And certainly, I mean
Speaker 1: if you start counting clothing, like none of us are
Speaker 1: except for those those few nutives out there. They're keeping
Speaker 1: it real for the for the original humans. We salute you. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so that you have it, um, But we're not quite
Speaker 1: done with the brain and the gut yet, because we
Speaker 1: have a little listener mail speaking of how important it
Speaker 1: is that our gut tell us what to do, and
Speaker 1: you know what to do. Uh. This is uh from
Speaker 1: reader Ryan who writes in about our recent episode about
Speaker 1: the gut in the mind, and they said, quote your
Speaker 1: episode on stomach on the stomach's influence on the mind
Speaker 1: struck my interest in regard to eating disorders. Also, as
Speaker 1: a late teen, I had a peculiar and sudden onset
Speaker 1: with a few life altering issues like IBS, irritable bal syndrome,
Speaker 1: manic depression more and more mannic than depressive, frankly, which
Speaker 1: can be very destructive, he adds UM and eventually a
Speaker 1: very long about with anorexia, which initiated as a coping
Speaker 1: mechanism with the ib S. The IBS almost completely subsided
Speaker 1: by my early twenties, but the anorexia persisted, and it
Speaker 1: really felt like I didn't have control over my own body.
Speaker 1: I often compare it to how a heavy substance substance
Speaker 1: addiction must feel. I dedicate a lot of insight into
Speaker 1: eating disorders because they are so misunderstood, stood as being
Speaker 1: a fueled by vanity, which just isn't the case, not
Speaker 1: always anyway. With these new insights on how much the
Speaker 1: stomach affects the mind, I'm excited to see what this
Speaker 1: will mean for the underlying uh and treatment of eating
Speaker 1: disorders on the whole. I mean, I'm sorry for the
Speaker 1: understanding and treatment. UH. And again that was from our
Speaker 1: reader Ryan, which I think is really interesting because that
Speaker 1: is what neuro gastontologists are pointing to. Are there. They
Speaker 1: are saying, like, is the gut of the problem here?
Speaker 1: Is that the the one that is mentally unstable in
Speaker 1: sending all these signals up to the brain and confusing matters, right, Um,
Speaker 1: so you gotta you gotta look out for that one.
Speaker 1: It's going to be big news here. And UH. On
Speaker 1: a lighter note, UH. In response to the same episode,
Speaker 1: Kevin writes and it says, just reassuring your podcast by
Speaker 1: saying that I probably listen to my gut more than
Speaker 1: I listened to my brain, because every time I listen
Speaker 1: to my brain it leads me in the wrong direction.
Speaker 1: But when I listened to my stomach, I generally have
Speaker 1: a better time here here. Yeah, you know, And I
Speaker 1: think it's interesting. As we started out this podcast talking
Speaker 1: about Flattiste, We've just close the circle with the guts.
Speaker 1: There's no avoiding it. As much as we you know,
Speaker 1: we we would like to, we haven't reached that point
Speaker 1: where we have engineered the humans that no longer um
Speaker 1: um unit flattis or poop. So that's right now, sttological
Speaker 1: free humans. Yeah. So hey, if you have anything to
Speaker 1: add to that, and certainly if you're the one one,
Speaker 1: or or or very few of one of the very
Speaker 1: few individuals out there who is flattest free um, do
Speaker 1: let us know. You can find us on Facebook and Twitter,
Speaker 1: where we are blow the Mind on both of those.
Speaker 1: We won't shown you. We promised, no, we won't. We
Speaker 1: won't shown you. You can also send us an email
Speaker 1: at blow the Mind at how stuff works dot com.
Speaker 1: For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit
Speaker 1: how stuff works dot com. To learn more about the podcast,
Speaker 1: click on the podcast icon in the upper right corner
Speaker 1: of our homepage. The how stuff Works iPhone app has
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