Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind from how Stuff
Speaker 1: Works dot com. Hey, you're welcome to Stuff to Blow
Speaker 1: your Mind. My name is Robert lamp and I'm Julie Douglas,
Speaker 1: and we are sealed inside the Stuff to Blow Your
Speaker 1: Mind podcasting chamber right now, and we are going after
Speaker 1: a really fascinating topic and one that that really meshes
Speaker 1: well with our our sealed environment here. Yes, that's right.
Speaker 1: We're doing a little armchair traveling today and we're going
Speaker 1: to travel back to or ninety two or so. But
Speaker 1: before we do that, let's talk about this concept of
Speaker 1: a utopia, a garden of Eden. This is this thing
Speaker 1: that we aspire to. Oh yes, I mean, this is
Speaker 1: an idea that has been with this rageous right that
Speaker 1: there perhaps was a primordial time, an untouched time, where
Speaker 1: everything was was perfect, and that we could maybe recreate
Speaker 1: that through some system, because it seems it seems like
Speaker 1: we have all of these flaws right in in in
Speaker 1: human culture and human society. The way we do things,
Speaker 1: the way we interact with the world. It's it's inherently flawed.
Speaker 1: We're on this doom trajectory and there's got to be
Speaker 1: something we could do to change at some order. We
Speaker 1: could put on ourselves, some technology we could we could
Speaker 1: aspire to something that would turn things around and save
Speaker 1: us from ourselves and maybe, depending on what your worldview
Speaker 1: is and you and and how you view your mythic history,
Speaker 1: return us to some uh, some previous mode of living
Speaker 1: that was pristine, yeah, replete with waterfalls, right, yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: we could do that. We are of course talking about
Speaker 1: biosphere too, which how do you explain this? I think
Speaker 1: about it as like this burning man fever dream, like
Speaker 1: let's put up an arc in the desert and create
Speaker 1: a utopia. But it's not, in fact a fever dream,
Speaker 1: or may be it was, uh one of the founders
Speaker 1: of this idea's fever dream. It actually came into reality
Speaker 1: in the early nineties and it served as this kind
Speaker 1: of mini earth. Yeah, I mean, it was, in a
Speaker 1: sense kind of a scientific burning Man because because the
Speaker 1: you can certainly make comparisons between the the energy that
Speaker 1: that started each of these endeavors, and while one was
Speaker 1: what one was based in, uh in art and expression
Speaker 1: and have just having a big old party out in
Speaker 1: the middle of nowhere, the oh, there is a scientific endeavor. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and we're talking about this miniature air tight world that
Speaker 1: sprang up in the desert, and we're gonna take a
Speaker 1: look at this in two episodes. Today's episode is going
Speaker 1: to focus more on the architecture and what happened during
Speaker 1: this experiment, um so. And we do want to mention
Speaker 1: that there have been other biospheres built before, mainly in
Speaker 1: the sixties and seventies by Russian and American scientists, but
Speaker 1: those really pale in comparison to the grand er that
Speaker 1: is biosphere too. Yeah, the grandeur is key here because
Speaker 1: this was I mean, it was really a realization of
Speaker 1: ideas that had previously mostly been the domain of conjecture
Speaker 1: and even science fiction. Like I instantly think back to
Speaker 1: n film Silent Running, where you had h all of
Speaker 1: the forest on Earth had been decimated, and you had
Speaker 1: and you had all the ecosystems of the Earth sealed
Speaker 1: off and self contained hemispheres in space looked after by
Speaker 1: Bruce dern in some Robots and and that is a
Speaker 1: really beautiful film with a strong ecological message, but it
Speaker 1: was very much science fiction. But fast forward a couple
Speaker 1: of decades and you see it actually take shape on
Speaker 1: the Earth, and it is an amazing endeavor. It is.
Speaker 1: The project was originally conceived and executed by a group
Speaker 1: of adventurers, artists, and philosophers known as the Centergists, and
Speaker 1: they have the financial backing of Texas billionaire Ed Bass
Speaker 1: and oil magnet, and with that financing, they were actually
Speaker 1: able to bring this this idea to life. Yes. First
Speaker 1: of all, Ed Bass is one of two really key
Speaker 1: individuals for this whole project, because of course he had
Speaker 1: the funds to make it happen. Uh, And he's really
Speaker 1: is one of these characters that also makes you rethink
Speaker 1: the term Texas oil billionaire because this is a guy
Speaker 1: you know that that was and is remains very active
Speaker 1: and environmentalist and philanthropic endeavors. But the other key individual, uh,
Speaker 1: the other guy that this could not have happened without,
Speaker 1: is one John Allen. And we could really just devote
Speaker 1: a whole podcast that who wanted to to just analyzing
Speaker 1: John Allen because with this guy, you have a Colorado
Speaker 1: School of Minds trained metal orgist in Harvard NBA. All right,
Speaker 1: no big deal, uh, nineteen sixty three, he's uh, he's
Speaker 1: in a Manhattan office building. And the story goes that
Speaker 1: this was following two hallucinogenic experiences with peyote. He looks
Speaker 1: out the window at this uh, this the sprawling metropolis,
Speaker 1: and in sees the air out there, and he realizes
Speaker 1: that he can't open the window to get to that air.
Speaker 1: He has this epiphany. Uh. So he quits his job,
Speaker 1: heads out and begins seeking wisdom around the world. Um.
Speaker 1: By ninety seven he's become a self styled esoteric teacher
Speaker 1: in San Francisco, and his students go to New York
Speaker 1: and they set up a theater company. From there, they
Speaker 1: go to New Mexico where they start a commune near
Speaker 1: Santa Fe. And eventually he Eat meets add Bass, and
Speaker 1: add Bass starts listening to some of his ideas, and uh,
Speaker 1: and his ideas are really impressive. Yeah. I should also
Speaker 1: mention to you that that this group also has an
Speaker 1: oceanic research vessel. And all this time there they are
Speaker 1: trying in earnest to be rigorous about a scientific approach
Speaker 1: to the environment. And at this time Alan really comes
Speaker 1: up with the basis of this idea of the biosphere.
Speaker 1: He says, quote, there is a crisis of misalignment between
Speaker 1: the biosphere and the technosphere. These seem to be out
Speaker 1: of balance a catastrophe. Biosphere too, instead creates a balance
Speaker 1: between biosphere and technosphere. In other words, he's going to
Speaker 1: try to use the technology and and the money here
Speaker 1: that to create something of an artificial utopia. There's a
Speaker 1: great deal of interest with the synergists, who later redub
Speaker 1: themselves the Institute for Eco Technics, with not only understanding
Speaker 1: the environment but essentially bottling it up in the same
Speaker 1: way that you have, uh, the idea of a bottled terrarium. Uh.
Speaker 1: And and this is of course, is is looking into
Speaker 1: the future, thinking about the long term survival of the
Speaker 1: human rights, thinking about space exploration, thinking about how do
Speaker 1: we take not just a little of our environment with us,
Speaker 1: How do we not just take uh, you know, a
Speaker 1: portion of it that we consume and it has to
Speaker 1: be replenished. How do we take a self sustaining portion
Speaker 1: of our world with us and and even see other
Speaker 1: worlds with it. Yeah, this really was one of the
Speaker 1: missions of this project. And according to The New York
Speaker 1: Times in and they reported on it, the structure was
Speaker 1: builed as the first large habitat for humans that would
Speaker 1: live and breathe on its own as cut off from
Speaker 1: the Earth. As a spaceship. And again the idea was
Speaker 1: to to have this many atmosphere that could be portable eventually,
Speaker 1: but also to better understand Earth's biosphere or as the
Speaker 1: biosphere Ian called it, biosphere one. Yes. Yeah, I also
Speaker 1: want to point out that at a at a conference
Speaker 1: in oracle In, Allan announced his plan to build a
Speaker 1: prototype Mars calling on Earth before the decade was out.
Speaker 1: And he and he he said that the destiny of
Speaker 1: human beings was to see Earth's life into space. In
Speaker 1: the first stop would be a working colony on Mars.
Speaker 1: So these are some of the far reaching, ambitious ideas
Speaker 1: that were that were in the heads of John Allen
Speaker 1: and ultimately in the heads of those who, for lack
Speaker 1: of a better word, followed him and and and just
Speaker 1: bought into his vision. Now, let's talk about really where
Speaker 1: the rubber meets the road here when we're talking about
Speaker 1: this building. Okay, because so far we've been talking about
Speaker 1: all these sort of like esoteric ideas of utopia and
Speaker 1: biosphere and balancing. But what do you need in order
Speaker 1: to do that? You need an incredibly huge structure. And
Speaker 1: from nineteen eighty seven to ninete this structure was built
Speaker 1: in the snore and desert about thirty miles north of Tucson,
Speaker 1: and we were talking about a seven million, two hundred
Speaker 1: thousand cubic foot sealed glass and space frame structure spread
Speaker 1: over three point one five acres massive. Yeah, and I
Speaker 1: should also add that the original idea is they built
Speaker 1: this thing to laugh. The idea was that rotating crews
Speaker 1: would work here for a century. So one crew comes in,
Speaker 1: then the next crew comes in, and the experiment keeps
Speaker 1: going and going. Uh. You know, in all this, I
Speaker 1: keep thinking that like one of the other only other
Speaker 1: minds that comes that comes to my mind when I
Speaker 1: when I think of vision, like this is Walt Disney,
Speaker 1: and we know we've talked about his plans for for uh,
Speaker 1: for Walt Disney World and especially for Apcot Center, and
Speaker 1: how ambitious, crazy ambitious those ideas were, and those ideas
Speaker 1: had to be rolled back to meet the realities of business.
Speaker 1: And with Biosphere too, you see a bit of that.
Speaker 1: But they actually they actually got more of that vision
Speaker 1: somewhat accomplished, initially accomplished well, and we'll talk at a
Speaker 1: little bit about this more later, but there had to
Speaker 1: be an immense amount of excitement here because that's you know,
Speaker 1: initially the plan was thirty million dollars to build this,
Speaker 1: but it took two hundred million dollars. With that kind
Speaker 1: of wallet open, you can see how a lot of
Speaker 1: people would be interested in jumping on this and contributing
Speaker 1: to it, because you are, in a sense, making history
Speaker 1: with this building and with this plan. And one of
Speaker 1: the things, one of the reasons why it was so
Speaker 1: expensive is because it had to emulate a closed system
Speaker 1: that was energetically open, much like Earth. Right, So in
Speaker 1: other words, it's a materially closed system. So plants, for instance,
Speaker 1: biomass can't leave the system, but energy can, right, because
Speaker 1: whether or not it's heated or if it's absorbed um
Speaker 1: in other ways, it can move around in an energetic way.
Speaker 1: And that takes a lot of engineering, a lot of
Speaker 1: know how, and a lot of technology to pull that off.
Speaker 1: And it didn't skimp on bringing in great minds to
Speaker 1: work on this. It wasn't one of these situations where
Speaker 1: it's like a crazy guy building a pyramid out in
Speaker 1: the desert. No, that they brought in some of the
Speaker 1: finest minds to help construct not only the structure itself,
Speaker 1: but then ultimately the environments within it. Indeed, I mean
Speaker 1: it really became this unprecedented research tool, a mini Earth
Speaker 1: as much as you could make. All Right, we're gonna
Speaker 1: take a quick break, and when we come back, we're
Speaker 1: gonna continue talking about the structure itself and the creation
Speaker 1: of the environments with it. We're back, all right, um
Speaker 1: I I really love the architecture of Biosphere too. Yes,
Speaker 1: it's very beautiful. And if you haven't seen it, or
Speaker 1: haven't seen it recently, go visit our website. I'm going
Speaker 1: to make sure that we have a gallery there some
Speaker 1: really stunning images of this place, because yeah, it's it's
Speaker 1: a beautiful building. It's absolute retro futurist. It's got, um
Speaker 1: you know, the geodesic structures, those domes that are inspired
Speaker 1: by Buckminster Fuller. It's got even sort of Moorish architecture
Speaker 1: to it as well, and some of the I guess
Speaker 1: you would call the lungs of the building. And it
Speaker 1: was designed by a company called Biospheric Design, and again
Speaker 1: they were influenced, um by all of the sort of sixties,
Speaker 1: seventy and eightiest retro future visions of what this glass
Speaker 1: beheam of could be. And to me, I kind of
Speaker 1: I even think about it as this futuristic crystal palace. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it really does have that kind of looked to it.
Speaker 1: I I was looking at again, these images are fabulous
Speaker 1: and that you look at them and you see this
Speaker 1: place kind of like emerging out of the desert, but
Speaker 1: just emerging out of time. It's kind of it's it's
Speaker 1: unreal to to look at it. And it was built
Speaker 1: as the world's most air type building. It was designed
Speaker 1: to leak no more than ten percent of its air
Speaker 1: per year, and that is half the rate of the
Speaker 1: Space Shuttle. And it's stealed on the bottom by a
Speaker 1: stainless steel liner and on the top by steel and
Speaker 1: glass frame structure. So it really does try to fit
Speaker 1: those parameters really tightly. Because again, this was sort of
Speaker 1: if you think about it, this was probably the thing
Speaker 1: that the entire project was hanging on, this ability for
Speaker 1: it to keep its energy steal. Right. Of course, all
Speaker 1: this glass is key because obviously we need it. Again,
Speaker 1: it's thermodynamically open, so we need heat energy energy from
Speaker 1: the sun to actually enter through the glass. Yeah, in
Speaker 1: order to compensate for changes in air volume which should
Speaker 1: be caused by solar heating, right, the expanding atmosphere because
Speaker 1: of the heat and because of those alternating day and
Speaker 1: night temperatures, there were these large dome shape lungs that
Speaker 1: were constructed to deal with that expansion and make sure
Speaker 1: that the exterior didn't fracture to the point that the
Speaker 1: building would lose its integrity in the case of that
Speaker 1: seal that we were talking about. And so in this
Speaker 1: seven million, two hundred thousand cubic foot sealed structure, how
Speaker 1: much air do we actually have in there? How much
Speaker 1: soil do we have in there? We have about hundred
Speaker 1: and sixty one thousand cubic meters of atmosphere with about
Speaker 1: seventeen thousand meters cubic meters of soil and about one million,
Speaker 1: five hundred thousand liters of fresh water, which doesn't even
Speaker 1: account for this big ocean they put in there. Oh, yes,
Speaker 1: the artificial sea of biosphere to containing six hundred and
Speaker 1: seventy six thousand gallons or two million, five hundred and
Speaker 1: fifty five thousand, eight hundred ninety four liters uh and
Speaker 1: this was designed to be a coral reef reminiscent of
Speaker 1: the Caribbean and UH and just for future reference. And
Speaker 1: you can see this in some of the images that
Speaker 1: they were sharing on this the the ocean is situated
Speaker 1: between the desert in the rainforest. It's kind of a
Speaker 1: buffer zone, a temperature buffer. Yeah. So we've thrown all
Speaker 1: these statistics out at you, and I think you guys
Speaker 1: all have a good idea of how massive the structure was.
Speaker 1: But just imagine yourself on a cliff. Okay, Like you
Speaker 1: look above you and there's this glass dome, and you're
Speaker 1: on this cliff, and you're now looking over at a
Speaker 1: eight hundred fifty square mile coral reef, a four hundred
Speaker 1: fifty square mile mangrove marsh, a nineteen hundred square mile
Speaker 1: Amazonian rainforest, hundred square mile savannah grassland, and then oh sure,
Speaker 1: I'll take a fourteen hundred square mile fog desert. Yeah
Speaker 1: that sounds good. Oh, in a little tropical agriculture system
Speaker 1: with a farm, in a human habitat with living quarters. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's right, because you have the whole agricultural section as well.
Speaker 1: By the way, that rainforest um that was designed by
Speaker 1: Sir Gillian Prance uh then director of the New York
Speaker 1: Botanical Garden and uh as far as the the ocean
Speaker 1: area is concerned. I was designed by Walter A. D
Speaker 1: a geologist at the Smithsonian Institute. Yeah, and there's a
Speaker 1: waterfall in there. It's absolutely gorgeous. And if you look
Speaker 1: at some old footage of some of the Biospherians talking
Speaker 1: about their experience, they well, I'll say it was beautiful.
Speaker 1: Like That's the thing that stood out most to me
Speaker 1: is just how incredible this environment was. Yeah. I mean
Speaker 1: you look at these images and it's it's kind of
Speaker 1: like silent running, except more fabulous. Like it's more amazing
Speaker 1: looking than some of the sci fi visions that came
Speaker 1: before it. It's it's on par with Wonka Land, except
Speaker 1: that the waterfall is not chocolate but water. And we'll
Speaker 1: come back to to Wonka in a bit um. And
Speaker 1: you know, it reminds me a bit too. If I
Speaker 1: remember when I was a kid, my family would go
Speaker 1: up to the Opryland Hotel in Nashville, Tennessee, which has
Speaker 1: these big I've been there, right, Well, you know they
Speaker 1: have the big enclosed gardens, but but it's not really closed.
Speaker 1: It's my no means of biosphere. But I remember walking
Speaker 1: through it and like sort of imagining that I was
Speaker 1: in a spaceship. It's a little like that. Yeah. Um.
Speaker 1: And this is pretty amazing too. It it had something
Speaker 1: like three thousand documented species of plants and animals across
Speaker 1: its five biomes. So we're talking about everything from scorpions
Speaker 1: to microbes, to coral reefs, to crops and pests. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I mean, they really tried to represent actual ecosystems here,
Speaker 1: not just a situation of viol let's have some goats
Speaker 1: to milk, let's have some some chickens to eat, you know,
Speaker 1: or anything like that. It was let's have actual ecosystems.
Speaker 1: These need to be. These need to be the world
Speaker 1: in small Yeah. And if you have any doubt about
Speaker 1: the breath and depth of this project, consider that some
Speaker 1: of these species were grown in greenhouses, but some of
Speaker 1: them were trucked in as entire landscapes. And you had
Speaker 1: swaths of tropical rainforest sampled from Venezuela savannah, from French Guiana,
Speaker 1: desert from the Baja Marsh, from the ever Glades, and
Speaker 1: at the suggestion and left us of william S Burrows,
Speaker 1: bush babies were introduced to supply companion primates. I did
Speaker 1: not I did not run across that in my notes
Speaker 1: that William S Burrows actually contributed to this project. Sure,
Speaker 1: he weighed in it on as well. You want his
Speaker 1: name on the credits list when the scientists start pulling
Speaker 1: things apart later on, right, that's gonna help. Um. Now.
Speaker 1: Jane Poyter, who was one of the biosphereans, and we'll
Speaker 1: talk a little bit more about her later, she said
Speaker 1: that they called it their Garden of Eden on top
Speaker 1: of an aircraft carrier. And that's an app comparison, I think,
Speaker 1: because the the infrastructure required, the technology required for all
Speaker 1: of that, for all these these ecosystems to thrive within
Speaker 1: this contained environment, is pretty extensive. Yeah, because when we're
Speaker 1: talking about that structure below it, we're talking about twenty
Speaker 1: six air handler units in the basement of the technospheres
Speaker 1: they called it, that had the ability to heat and
Speaker 1: cool air and create condensate water for biospheres tooth and
Speaker 1: rain and fog atmospheres. Yeah, underneath you had mazes of pipes,
Speaker 1: events water tanks, a huge, huge empty vaps that we
Speaker 1: used to process human waste. Um. Yeah, but of course
Speaker 1: the cooling system because you're having to you're trying to
Speaker 1: keep a sealed greenhouse cool in a desert um and
Speaker 1: that requires a great deal of energy. So it is
Speaker 1: it's like an aircraft carrier, were the infrastructure beneath the
Speaker 1: this magical sci fi eten and you've got electrical power
Speaker 1: supplied to the biosphere from natural gas energy center, which
Speaker 1: is located outside of biosphere too, through air tight penetrations.
Speaker 1: Just in case you were wondering how that was happening,
Speaker 1: but still you can you can argue that, I guess
Speaker 1: it's geothermically it's geothermically open, so so that's allowed. All right,
Speaker 1: So now you have an idea of eating on top
Speaker 1: of this aircraft carrier. We're gonna take a quick break
Speaker 1: and we get back. We're going to talk about life
Speaker 1: in the biosphere. All right, we're back, and yes, indeed,
Speaker 1: life in the biasphere. Instantly, when you think about Biasphre two,
Speaker 1: you can't help but focus on the human aspect of it.
Speaker 1: Those eight individuals that actually went in dressed in their
Speaker 1: kind of star trek looking uniforms and gave some wonderful
Speaker 1: speeches before they did too, and and then had to
Speaker 1: live in there, had to work in there and roll
Speaker 1: with some of the difficulties that ended up popping up. Yeah,
Speaker 1: night to ninety one. They enter for two years in
Speaker 1: twenty minutes, as Jane Pointner says, and uh, all eight
Speaker 1: of them hung out together. We're talking about Jane Poytner,
Speaker 1: who was the lead scientist. There was Roy Walford, a
Speaker 1: doctor who studied restricted calorie diets, Tkayror McCallum, Linda Leah botanist,
Speaker 1: Abigail Ailing, a marine biologist, Mark Nelson who was in
Speaker 1: charge of the waste recycling systems, Mark von Telo who
Speaker 1: was in charge of those machines, that technosphere, and then
Speaker 1: Sally over student Stone who was the captain of them all.
Speaker 1: And this was not the first time these individuals met.
Speaker 1: This was a close knit group. They were all biosphereans. Uh.
Speaker 1: They were they were all very much in line with
Speaker 1: the ideas of John Allen uh and UH and they
Speaker 1: had been engaged in this and work leading up to this.
Speaker 1: So it's important to know that these these were not
Speaker 1: just chamos taken off the street. That while some of
Speaker 1: them may have engaged in theater in the past, these
Speaker 1: were not just It wasn't a theater troupe that was
Speaker 1: thrown into this. Uh. This Eden on an aircraft carrier. Uh.
Speaker 1: These were individuals who were very invested in the idea
Speaker 1: and had varying backgrounds that befitted someone that was going
Speaker 1: to live in a biosphere for two years. Yeah. And
Speaker 1: you know, if this were a theater troupe that was
Speaker 1: just thrown in there, as the media kind of tried
Speaker 1: to pretend, you know, they wouldn't last for more than
Speaker 1: twenty four hours. And I'm not saying anything against theater troupe.
Speaker 1: I'm I'm one of you guys out there, um, one
Speaker 1: of of us. But because we can't help, you know,
Speaker 1: Big Brother, the TV series Reality Sensation, when we think
Speaker 1: about this, because that idea was inspired by biosphere too,
Speaker 1: So we think about individuals thrown into this environment. We
Speaker 1: think of instantly think about interpersonal conflict and people who
Speaker 1: don't know each other having to deal with each other.
Speaker 1: And I'm not saying that actors have a lot of
Speaker 1: interpersonal but I'm saying there's a huge psychological element to this,
Speaker 1: and that all those biosphereens had to be ready for this,
Speaker 1: and they trained for this in various ways over the
Speaker 1: two years um that this was being put into place,
Speaker 1: and some of them and I believe it was Pointner
Speaker 1: in perhaps Sally's silver stone. They also did some some
Speaker 1: closed system trials and lived and tried to work in
Speaker 1: smaller environments to get themselves ready for this. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: by and large, all these individuals went on after biosphere
Speaker 1: to continue to work in in in related areas UM.
Speaker 1: You know, for instance, Mark Nelson continued to work in
Speaker 1: UM in watershed management, environmental engineering. Uh, you know, they
Speaker 1: all stayed within their their wheelhouses. So these were people
Speaker 1: that were invested long term in the disciplines that brought
Speaker 1: them to buy it through the biosphere. Yeah, particularly Jane Potner,
Speaker 1: and we can talk about her later, but she's done
Speaker 1: a lot of work in the fields of environmental science
Speaker 1: and space exploration. But so, all right, you get a
Speaker 1: group of people together, you they're all working together, they're fine,
Speaker 1: but you know, they have to deal with the basics, right,
Speaker 1: like food, and this is where things get a bit
Speaker 1: dicey in the biosphere. All right. Now, keep in mind
Speaker 1: that if you you want a pizza in the biosphere,
Speaker 1: you're gonna have to make it from scratch. And we're
Speaker 1: talking about taking the seed, growing the seed, threshing the wheat,
Speaker 1: um feeding your goat, milking the goat. So, as Jane
Speaker 1: Pointner has said, um in some of her talks, if
Speaker 1: you want a pizza, it's going to take four months.
Speaker 1: And I think that gives you an idea of the
Speaker 1: kind of challenges they were up against in producing their
Speaker 1: own food and maintaining it. Yeah, I believe the original
Speaker 1: estimate was that they would be able to grow eighty
Speaker 1: percent of the food they needed within the biosphere. Um.
Speaker 1: And and even that was it was pretty ambitious, considering
Speaker 1: that they just had about a half an acre to
Speaker 1: grow all this food that they're they're not using pesticides,
Speaker 1: they're they're having to do all the work themselves. But
Speaker 1: but then, but before they launch, uh, the management decided, well,
Speaker 1: isn't gonna cut it. We need to and to make
Speaker 1: up for that, we're gonna put everybody on a calorie restricted,
Speaker 1: low fat, nutrient dense diet. Yes, it's just sensible, right,
Speaker 1: I mean, because if food is an issue, well, then
Speaker 1: we're gonna we're gonna cut back as much as we're
Speaker 1: we're pushing the envelope on our ability to produce it.
Speaker 1: And a lot of that has to do with the
Speaker 1: types of food that you can grow at that point, right,
Speaker 1: and managed to grow. And when you're thinking about the
Speaker 1: food again, you had mentioned there are no pesticides or
Speaker 1: herbicides here, so that makes a little bit more difficult
Speaker 1: to produce this food. And the reason why there are
Speaker 1: no pesticides and herbicides is because those chemicals would have
Speaker 1: affected the air quality. Because although this biospheres atmosphere is
Speaker 1: really large, right, it's small enough where those toxins would
Speaker 1: have built up really quickly and had a very negative
Speaker 1: effect on the health and well being of everybody inside.
Speaker 1: I mean, those agents are are problematic for the world
Speaker 1: in large when you're dealing with the world and small
Speaker 1: even more so. Again, this is why this is such
Speaker 1: an amazing experiment, because you are saying things at a
Speaker 1: microcosm of of the macrocosmic world. And so when you're
Speaker 1: looking at that first winter, you have al Nino in effect,
Speaker 1: and that means that there's an unusual amount of cloud
Speaker 1: cover in southern Arizona, and that is contributing to unexpectedly
Speaker 1: low food production. Yeah, less biomass production, less food. And
Speaker 1: then on top of that again no pesticide, no or beside,
Speaker 1: so you're in having to actually deal with mites and
Speaker 1: diseases cutting into your crop production. You don't get that
Speaker 1: pristine modern agricultural hall out of this. Yeah, and then
Speaker 1: you've got chickens who are failing to produce sufficient numbers
Speaker 1: of eggs, and they and the pigs are consuming a
Speaker 1: lot of the resources. So the biospherians decide that they're
Speaker 1: going to slaughter the farm animals. Now keep in mind
Speaker 1: too that um you know, call calling back maybe to
Speaker 1: an older episode of Real Wilding in which we talked
Speaker 1: about the cascade effect. Once you remove one species, well,
Speaker 1: it's a domino effect because so you can only imagine,
Speaker 1: and this only three thousand species wide world, that if
Speaker 1: you take out some of some of these elements, some
Speaker 1: of these animals and these plants they're dying off, then
Speaker 1: that's going to affect everything else. Yeah, because cycles are
Speaker 1: key here. You need you need the nitrogen cycle, the
Speaker 1: phosphorus cycle, just the basic add and flow that is
Speaker 1: there's central to Uh. The success of the biosphere needs
Speaker 1: to be in place in biosphere too. And when things
Speaker 1: start falling apart, uh, the center cannot hold nicely done, yes,
Speaker 1: and indeed the center cannot hold and food becomes an issue,
Speaker 1: and there are rumors that maybe the biospherience are smuggling
Speaker 1: in food, especially when Jane Poytner accidentally slices off the
Speaker 1: tip of her finger and she has to leave the Biosphere,
Speaker 1: which is another big kerfuffle, right because we've left in
Speaker 1: um and when she does leave it, she returns with
Speaker 1: a double bag, which people say, I bet that's full
Speaker 1: of bags of Cheetos and in ho hoes and whatever else. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and I mean she apparently it was not. She claims
Speaker 1: it was not. It was apparently she just said with
Speaker 1: some drawings and circuit board something that to that extent um. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the media was really invested in this, and this wasn't
Speaker 1: even our modern our news cycle. I mean, imagine if
Speaker 1: they did bios, if Biosphere two had taken place during
Speaker 1: the age of Fox News. I I cannot even imagine
Speaker 1: the field day they would have had with this, because
Speaker 1: because everybody was really into this, it was ambitious project.
Speaker 1: You had what you had these well meaning, uh you know,
Speaker 1: kind of hippie science guys and gals going into this thing.
Speaker 1: And then you begin to see shortcomings happening. You begin
Speaker 1: to see, uh, things like this person leaving and come
Speaker 1: again with a mysterious bag. So there's all this room
Speaker 1: to go, oh, what are they doing there? There? They
Speaker 1: don't know what they're doing there there. The system is
Speaker 1: flawed and and then that the schaden Freud effect kicks
Speaker 1: in and you get to set back and uh and
Speaker 1: and have a hearty laugh at this whole project. Yeah,
Speaker 1: keep in mind that there were a ton of people
Speaker 1: that were outside of the structure looking in because again
Speaker 1: we're talking about glass, and they would observe the bio
Speaker 1: experience and this was like a big deal. There are
Speaker 1: a ton of people that were really interested in so
Speaker 1: it's a human zoo and they look in and what
Speaker 1: do they see? But the bio experience are beginning to
Speaker 1: turn orange? Yes, And I kid you not, it sounds
Speaker 1: like it just made that up. Oompa Loompa's to return
Speaker 1: to Willy Wonka. And that has everything to do with
Speaker 1: their diet, which was largely sweet potatas. Yeah, of their
Speaker 1: diet the first year it was sweet potatoes. So we're
Speaker 1: talking about a lot of beta caroteen, right, and of
Speaker 1: the fact they consumed was from bananas, and so yeah,
Speaker 1: as as a consequence there can began to turn orange
Speaker 1: can you imagine, you know, I'm sure the media was
Speaker 1: like and now they're turning into Pompa's. It's difficult. It's
Speaker 1: difficult to imagine becoming sick of sweet potatoes, but I'm
Speaker 1: sure it would happen. And it's difficult to imagine turning
Speaker 1: orange because of eating too many of them. But you well,
Speaker 1: and that becomes one of the problems here under the
Speaker 1: biosphere is that you've got that limited calorie restricted diet.
Speaker 1: You have decreased i would say mental health as a result,
Speaker 1: because there's some depression setting in. Um. Here are some statistics.
Speaker 1: Men lost sixteen of their b m I their body
Speaker 1: mass index in six months, women lost eleven percent. Their
Speaker 1: average systolic blood pressure decrease from a hundred nine to
Speaker 1: eighty nine, and their distalic BP decrease from seventy four.
Speaker 1: So these are some pretty big changes happening in their bodies. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and you know, the sources we're looking at didn't really
Speaker 1: go into this as much. But we've talked about what
Speaker 1: happens when an individual is is cut off into a
Speaker 1: solitary confinement environment and this is a rather sprawling complex,
Speaker 1: so it's not you know, one to one with someone
Speaker 1: being in a tiny cell, but still they're engaging with
Speaker 1: the same place and the same people every day, day
Speaker 1: and day while rolling with with with this calor restricted diet,
Speaker 1: with problems with their food supply and other issues that
Speaker 1: will get into. Yeah, and Pointner says that they became
Speaker 1: pretty obsessed with food, or at least she did. And
Speaker 1: she actually has a book called The Human Experiment two
Speaker 1: years in twenty minutes inside Biosphere too, and she talks
Speaker 1: about watching a film right yeah, and and the united
Speaker 1: she find herself not even focusing on the plot or
Speaker 1: the characters. It's about what they're eating, you know, because
Speaker 1: you put yourself in that those shoes, imagining yourself, you know,
Speaker 1: feeling this hunger, and and there you're watching, you know,
Speaker 1: a food fight and a big comedy. That's the way
Speaker 1: I'm imagining it, that it's like classic Hollywood food fight
Speaker 1: and they're just like, throw that pie at me. This
Speaker 1: next description, I think is it's kind of pathetic. She says,
Speaker 1: sometimes we lined up in the second story windows of
Speaker 1: the habitat and took turns peering through binoculars at fat people.
Speaker 1: And then she says, for everyone seemed to overweight to us.
Speaker 1: Then even the slender people who were spurting catch up
Speaker 1: on sausages and shoveling them into their mouths. We were
Speaker 1: culinary voyers. This reminds me of old cartoons where you know,
Speaker 1: you'd have the one character would be starving on the
Speaker 1: desert island and they look at the other one and
Speaker 1: they start picturing a big ham hawk and yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: and it seems like that is in a sense sort
Speaker 1: of what's happening. And moreover, they just they're not is uh,
Speaker 1: you know, energy felled this they might be, and so
Speaker 1: the tasks that they have to do take a lot longer. Yeah,
Speaker 1: because there's a lot of work to be done because
Speaker 1: again growing your own food, dealing with the animals, maintaining
Speaker 1: the environment, keeping records, and then just just day to
Speaker 1: day toil. And you're having to do all of that
Speaker 1: while rolling with these with this shortage of nourishment. You're right,
Speaker 1: it's like extreme farming. And also you have to to
Speaker 1: keep in mind that the carbon dioxide levels were rising,
Speaker 1: so they were continuously harvesting in sequestering biomass or plants
Speaker 1: all over the facility so they can control that or
Speaker 1: try to And then they would shovel and scrape carbonate
Speaker 1: off their homemade natural CEO to scrubber. So keep that
Speaker 1: in mind with just the regular things that they were
Speaker 1: having to do just to survive. And one of the
Speaker 1: things are having to deal with your is just the
Speaker 1: unpredictability of the physical environment. I mean that's the thing
Speaker 1: about biosphere too. And again keeping in and keep in mind,
Speaker 1: it was such an ambitious project, in such a large,
Speaker 1: sprawling project, again trying to to take the ecosystem, larger
Speaker 1: ecosystems and contain them and manage them within an enclosed environment.
Speaker 1: It unforeseen consequences are going to take place, things you
Speaker 1: couldn't possibly think of. So, for instance, they had to
Speaker 1: deal with a cockroach explosion, their cockroaches everywhere. Crazy ants
Speaker 1: are invading from the outside. They're breaking through your space
Speaker 1: shuttle a ceilant to to get into that environment and
Speaker 1: start causing havoc. Yeah, they eventually did um cross the
Speaker 1: silicone seal that was eventually penetrated, and so then you
Speaker 1: have two different biomes uniting with each other, right, which
Speaker 1: you know would obviously affect the integrity of the experiment.
Speaker 1: Um As you said, they have the cockroaches, they those
Speaker 1: on night duty have have the dubious task of collecting
Speaker 1: those cockroaches and other environments and uh feeding them to
Speaker 1: the animals, because again, that's a resource they can't waste.
Speaker 1: That there's some food for the animals that they don't
Speaker 1: have to go out and collect for themselves they're harvest Hey, guys,
Speaker 1: I really need that key to the banana room because
Speaker 1: I think the cockroaches might be getting in there. Well,
Speaker 1: that's the thing that, by the way, we failed to
Speaker 1: mention that that the only locked room in the Biosphere
Speaker 1: two was the banana room because apparently the scent was
Speaker 1: such a siren smell to all of everybody on these
Speaker 1: restricted diets that they had to lock cut up to
Speaker 1: make sure people didn't get up in the Meanwhile, morning
Speaker 1: glory vines are overrunning all of the other plants, including
Speaker 1: the precious food crops yep, and fish too many in number.
Speaker 1: They begin to die off, and that's partly because there's
Speaker 1: a phosphorus trapped in the water system. Yeah, the phosphorus
Speaker 1: cycles out of whack. Yeah, and then those fish start
Speaker 1: to clog the oceans filtration systems. Another unforeseen circumstance lack
Speaker 1: of wind resulted in the trees not developing stress would
Speaker 1: to cope with mechanical stress, so they were brittle and
Speaker 1: prone to collapse, which actually later on and we'll talk
Speaker 1: about this in another episode, really helped to inform people
Speaker 1: about ecosystems and how important, uh you know, trees and
Speaker 1: tree canopies are and how they interact with the environment.
Speaker 1: As I mentioned before, nitrous and phosphors cycles are disrupted,
Speaker 1: the nitrous oxide levels actually end up growing high enough
Speaker 1: to reduce vitamin B twelve synthesis to a level that
Speaker 1: could impair or damage the brain. And meanwhile a third
Speaker 1: of the flora and fauna wind up just going extinct
Speaker 1: in the biosphere too, including most of the vertebrates and
Speaker 1: all of the pollinating insects. So again, collapse, more and
Speaker 1: more collapse is spiraling out right now, the death knail
Speaker 1: perhaps to this whole endeavor. And keep in mind of
Speaker 1: laughing cas nitrous oxide is tasso, which can crazy, right,
Speaker 1: you have a loss of oxygen. So initially it was
Speaker 1: at which is roughly the same Earth's right, but it
Speaker 1: drops to four and Pointner says it was like playing
Speaker 1: atomic hide and seek. They could not figure out how
Speaker 1: they were losing it. They lost seven tons of oxygen,
Speaker 1: and it turns out that that oxygen was reacting with
Speaker 1: the concrete structure. So that was sart of siphoning it
Speaker 1: off and leading to gradually and continuously lower levels, so
Speaker 1: much so that the biospherians were getting really groggy, they
Speaker 1: had sleep apnea, they couldn't complete sentences, and so finally, um,
Speaker 1: this we need some outside help for this, which caused
Speaker 1: quite a fracture. Yeah, because ultimately reached the point where, hey,
Speaker 1: to keep going, we need outside air, we need we
Speaker 1: need oxygen pumped into biosphere too. Otherwise when we've gotta
Speaker 1: we gotta crack, we gotta crack a window. And essentially
Speaker 1: that's what they're doing. They're kind of reaching the point
Speaker 1: where you're saying, let's go ahead and crack the window.
Speaker 1: Um by letting by letting in a shifted in oxygen,
Speaker 1: it was brought into the form of a liquid oxygen.
Speaker 1: And this is one of those things that happens during
Speaker 1: the course they're two years that really ratchets up this
Speaker 1: idea of idealism versus science. Right, So, so essentially you
Speaker 1: have two groups that disagree on how to manage things,
Speaker 1: and you can understand how this fracture just causes were
Speaker 1: more squabbling, right, because again, everyone's hungry, everyone's sluggish, everyone's
Speaker 1: been been stuck in there this long. And meanwhile they're
Speaker 1: also they're also outside stress issues to consider because originally
Speaker 1: this whole thing was budgeted at thirty million, and it
Speaker 1: had already cost or reported two hundred million. So so
Speaker 1: there was a financial aspect of this as well. Right,
Speaker 1: So it's not just the eight of them making these
Speaker 1: decisions autonomously. Autonomously, I want to add, you know, you
Speaker 1: have the management outside. You've got John Allen and others
Speaker 1: who are trying to control this, whose money and vision
Speaker 1: are ultimately at stake in this uh, in this endeavor, right,
Speaker 1: and this kind of adds to those two different factions
Speaker 1: or those differences on how things should be managed. So
Speaker 1: just consider this, for the last fourteen months of the mission,
Speaker 1: the eight crew members, would you know that the two
Speaker 1: different groups would not make eye contact or speak to
Speaker 1: each other unless absolutely necessary. Now I do that if
Speaker 1: like a meeting goes more than twenty minutes here, it works,
Speaker 1: so I can't really blame them, But imagine for two years,
Speaker 1: you know, and imagine this too, that's like losing half
Speaker 1: of your social sphere, right, So think about half of
Speaker 1: all your friends just evaporating. Now, think about you being
Speaker 1: in that biosphere with four people you like and four
Speaker 1: people or three people you like, and four people you hate. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and like a deep personal hatred, the kind you can
Speaker 1: only have for someone after you've you've worked really closely
Speaker 1: with them and and and this, and shared vision with
Speaker 1: them and then had a big falling out and we're
Speaker 1: unable to escape their presence. Yeah, awkward every single day.
Speaker 1: So apparently one of the crew set up funding for
Speaker 1: psychological monitoring and counseling ahead of time. But this experiment
Speaker 1: was rejected by management. And we'll talk a little bit
Speaker 1: more about this, but some of that is tied to
Speaker 1: the idea that this wasn't the most transparent of projects.
Speaker 1: That being said, they stuck it out and the the
Speaker 1: eight crew members all emerged alive through the airlock in
Speaker 1: September three, though in two separate groups of four uh,
Speaker 1: not speaking to each other. Everybody was grumpy. Everybody was
Speaker 1: probably ready to hit the nearest buffet. But but they
Speaker 1: they did. They stuck it out. They made it to
Speaker 1: the end of the experiment. And that's something I feel
Speaker 1: like to keep in mind through all this, despite all
Speaker 1: the flaws which we'll get into. I mean, an experiment
Speaker 1: in its essence is not a thing where you set
Speaker 1: out to necessarily reach that success point. It's about two
Speaker 1: and you learn from the failures of the experiment as well.
Speaker 1: You learn from the the the unforeseen consequences of the experiment.
Speaker 1: And this was a sprawling experiment. Yeah. Pointer talks about
Speaker 1: this too, and her Ted talk like this was unchartered territory,
Speaker 1: no one had ever done this before. Of course there
Speaker 1: would be failure. Um. So we'll talk more in the
Speaker 1: next episode about some of the stuff that actually spiraled
Speaker 1: out of it that was really advantageous um. But I
Speaker 1: think for now it's probably worth mentioning at After this,
Speaker 1: this phase one of the experiment closed out. It was
Speaker 1: largely ridiculed as this kind of I don't know performance,
Speaker 1: Aren't this quasi science? Yeah, I mean there were so
Speaker 1: many moving parts through this, so many people involved in it. Um.
Speaker 1: There there's plenty of areas to pick away at this,
Speaker 1: at the structure of the idea. Because we mentioned the
Speaker 1: CEO to Scrubber, which is a controversial issue that was
Speaker 1: supposedly sort of secretly installed, which which you know, there's
Speaker 1: a there's an X on the checklist there. Then there's
Speaker 1: the oxygen having to be brought in. There's that bag
Speaker 1: that probably had Twinkies in it that came in. Um,
Speaker 1: there's a there's a criticisms about the the scientific pedigree
Speaker 1: of the individuals that were placed in their criticisms about
Speaker 1: the oversight, criticisms about the record keeping. Um. And then
Speaker 1: you start dipping into the history of the Synergist as well,
Speaker 1: and people start saying, well, this sounds a lot like
Speaker 1: a cult. So you're basically have like theater trupy, you know,
Speaker 1: environmental cult members and Star Trek uniforms going into this thing.
Speaker 1: How can we take any of it seriously? Well, especially
Speaker 1: when you consider that the founder, John Allen, his pen
Speaker 1: name was John Dolphin, Johnny Dolphin. That really helps there.
Speaker 1: Uh yeah, I mean Dolphins and Space and John C.
Speaker 1: Lily and I mean, yeah, we touched a little bit
Speaker 1: about Alan. That is just a character very much a
Speaker 1: charismatic leader of a movement with lots of ideas. Uh.
Speaker 1: And if you if you were to say, hey, kind
Speaker 1: of sounds like a cult leader. You know, maybe you
Speaker 1: wouldn't be that far off the off the track. Well,
Speaker 1: even know we're discussing this earlier. It's probably if it
Speaker 1: was is a cult, it's probably the most productive cult
Speaker 1: in the world. And you've got to look at this
Speaker 1: thing and say, Wow, the fact that they were able
Speaker 1: to come up with us and energize and mobilize enough
Speaker 1: people to do this to pull it off to some
Speaker 1: degree is pretty amazing. Yeah. I mean, generally speaking, uh,
Speaker 1: the energy of occult tends to to go astray. But
Speaker 1: in this case, the centergist really got a lot of
Speaker 1: things done even before biosphere too. And granted they they
Speaker 1: benefited from some terrific funding as well, but uh, but yeah,
Speaker 1: they Maybe the thing here is that if you're if
Speaker 1: you're gonna do a big project, like there's really a megaproject, uh,
Speaker 1: that that kind of skips ahead of some of the phases.
Speaker 1: You know, It's not like they didn't build a mom
Speaker 1: and pop biosphere. They built an epic biosphere. Maybe you
Speaker 1: need the energy and guidance of a cult like structure
Speaker 1: and a cult like energy to reach that point. So
Speaker 1: maybe there should be like a NASA cult formed to
Speaker 1: create the momentum. Yeah, I mean maybe, I mean, certainly
Speaker 1: I could see where it's it's two sides of the
Speaker 1: same coin. It's like, how do you want to get
Speaker 1: to to that point? Do you want to go with
Speaker 1: something that's rigorously scientific but also um, you know, um
Speaker 1: adheres to the limitations of politics? Well, where do you
Speaker 1: go with like blank check uh funded cult? I don't know.
Speaker 1: I think that's what's so exciting and frustrating about this
Speaker 1: project is because you could see it had legs. You
Speaker 1: could see where it might have if if it had oversight,
Speaker 1: if it had had transparency and um and the management
Speaker 1: was a bit different. Let me put it that way.
Speaker 1: You can see how this thing could have created, um,
Speaker 1: some very intentional studies, long term studies. That being said,
Speaker 1: there was still plenty of accidental science that came from this,
Speaker 1: and we'll talk about this in the next episode. Indeed,
Speaker 1: if you could have possibly combined the sensibility of the
Speaker 1: synergist movement with a more rigorous structure, a little more
Speaker 1: NASA in there, uh you know, along with the funding,
Speaker 1: who knows what we could have we could have achieved
Speaker 1: with this. But as again, as we'll discussed in the
Speaker 1: next episode, we really did get a lot out of
Speaker 1: Biosphere Too. Uh, even though at the time it is
Speaker 1: very much discussed as a failure. At the time, Uh,
Speaker 1: it kind of became the laughing stock in the media
Speaker 1: towards the end. Um, despite all of that, Uh, there
Speaker 1: was there's a lot of good that came out of this. Indeed,
Speaker 1: And if you guys are interested in looking at some, um,
Speaker 1: some documentaries on this, I want to recommend the New
Speaker 1: York Times. They have a documentary that's like twelve minute
Speaker 1: long documentary. Yeah, it's called Biosphere Too, an American Space Odyssey.
Speaker 1: And then there is a documentary about the actual building
Speaker 1: of Biosphere Too called Well Apples Grow on Mars. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I think at the end of the day, I mean,
Speaker 1: Biosphere Too is something that will be in the history
Speaker 1: books long term. It will come a time when this
Speaker 1: is very much at least a bullet point, a very
Speaker 1: strong bullet point in uh the history of humanity as
Speaker 1: we uh explored more about how our world works and
Speaker 1: attempted to take it beyond Biosphere one. I agree. I
Speaker 1: think it is only now beginning to get its due. Uh.
Speaker 1: So there you have it. Hey, In the meantime, while
Speaker 1: you're waiting for episode two on this topic, head on
Speaker 1: over to stuff to blow your mind dot com. That's
Speaker 1: where you'll find all of the episodes we've ever done.
Speaker 1: You'll find blog post videos, and you'll also find a
Speaker 1: gallery of Biosphere two images. You'll probably find that linked
Speaker 1: on the front page, but also the landing page for
Speaker 1: this particular episode will include that link. And if you
Speaker 1: have some thoughts on this on biospheres or living in
Speaker 1: closed systems, maybe you have submitted yourself to one let
Speaker 1: us know. You can email us at below the mind
Speaker 1: at how stuff works dot com for more on this
Speaker 1: and thousands of other topics. Does it how stuff works
Speaker 1: dot com