WEBVTT - John C. Lilly: Province of the Mind 0:00:03.080 --> 0:00:05.840 Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind from how Stop 0:00:05.920 --> 0:00:13.640 works dot com. Hey you welcome to Stuff to Blow 0:00:13.720 --> 0:00:15.600 your Mind. My name is Robert Lamb and I am 0:00:15.680 --> 0:00:18.119 Christian Sager, and we're going to be talking about a 0:00:18.160 --> 0:00:22.919 great combination of things today isolation, tanks, dolphins, and psychedelics. Yeah, 0:00:22.920 --> 0:00:25.400 the creature from the Black Lagoon will actually show up, 0:00:26.120 --> 0:00:31.960 Cold War era anti espionage, weird science. It's it's quite 0:00:31.960 --> 0:00:34.360 a package. You couldn't make this up. Like if you 0:00:34.880 --> 0:00:38.200 wrote a fictional account of a guy like John C. Lily, 0:00:38.400 --> 0:00:41.480 it would seem absurd, but this is a life he led. 0:00:41.760 --> 0:00:44.760 Yeah indeed. I mean even the fictionalized accounts of the man, 0:00:44.960 --> 0:00:48.800 I feel that they don't quite capture the weirdness and 0:00:48.880 --> 0:00:54.920 strangeness and just mind expanding awesomeness of his actual story. 0:00:55.120 --> 0:00:57.680 They don't know. So, but before we roll right in, 0:00:57.760 --> 0:00:59.720 because I think we should really just dive into the 0:00:59.760 --> 0:01:03.240 deep been no pun intended with John C. Lily. Uh 0:01:03.560 --> 0:01:05.560 do we just want to remind our audience that, uh, 0:01:05.920 --> 0:01:08.040 you know, we don't just do the podcast Stuff to 0:01:08.040 --> 0:01:11.600 Blow Your Mind as a multi media conglomerate, and uh, 0:01:11.840 --> 0:01:13.680 you can visit us at Stuff to Blow Your Mind. 0:01:13.720 --> 0:01:16.280 Dot com where you can find blog posts by us. 0:01:16.880 --> 0:01:19.559 The podcast is obviously there, of course, but for every 0:01:19.560 --> 0:01:22.840 podcast episode we add related content so in case you're 0:01:22.920 --> 0:01:26.240 curious about learning more, uh, there's places that you can go. 0:01:26.400 --> 0:01:28.720 And then we also do videos as well. That's right. 0:01:28.760 --> 0:01:31.880 And Hey, wherever you listen to it, be it iTunes 0:01:32.280 --> 0:01:35.640 or uh Spotify or any of the various so wonderful 0:01:35.680 --> 0:01:38.520 platforms out there, you can support the show by simply 0:01:38.640 --> 0:01:41.640 giving us a positive rating and a positive review of 0:01:41.680 --> 0:01:44.319 the platform. Allows that kind of interaction. Yeah, and the 0:01:44.400 --> 0:01:46.839 last thing I'll say is before we get into Lily, 0:01:46.920 --> 0:01:48.840 is don't forget to follow us on social media. If 0:01:48.840 --> 0:01:51.320 you're on Facebook, you're on Twitter, you're on Tumbler. We're 0:01:51.360 --> 0:01:53.840 on all those platforms as Blow the Mind. And we 0:01:53.880 --> 0:01:56.600 don't only post our own stuff, but we curate lots 0:01:56.600 --> 0:01:59.600 of weird science e bizarre audity type stuff that we 0:01:59.680 --> 0:02:02.320 find throughout the day as we're doing our research. That's right. 0:02:02.800 --> 0:02:05.720 So let's talk about Lily first. Why are we covering 0:02:05.840 --> 0:02:10.200 him Because Lily, for people who don't know, comes up frequently. 0:02:10.320 --> 0:02:12.440 I'd say in the last year of doing the show, 0:02:12.480 --> 0:02:14.480 he's come up at least four or five times. Yeah, 0:02:14.480 --> 0:02:16.960 and in past episodes, I'm I know that we haven't 0:02:17.040 --> 0:02:19.280 had at least three episodes that have dealt with him, 0:02:19.320 --> 0:02:22.160 at least in small portions. Right, Yeah, you guys did 0:02:22.200 --> 0:02:24.880 a dolphin episode. You and Julie did a dolphin episode. 0:02:24.919 --> 0:02:26.920 And then there was the what was it, the like 0:02:27.040 --> 0:02:29.720 kind of crazy rock star life of Scientists. Yeah, yeah, 0:02:29.720 --> 0:02:32.119 we did when there was just kind of a sampler 0:02:32.120 --> 0:02:35.720 platter of different real life scientists that had sort of 0:02:35.720 --> 0:02:39.120 a weird side to them. But Lily is one of 0:02:39.120 --> 0:02:41.919 those individuals first of all, that, as we've been saying, 0:02:42.440 --> 0:02:45.720 deserves a deeper dive, He deserves a closer look because 0:02:45.720 --> 0:02:48.200 he was just he was into too many things. He 0:02:48.639 --> 0:02:51.800 really lived too many lives to just try and condense 0:02:51.840 --> 0:02:56.200 it to a quick little segment about his psychedelic dolphin research, 0:02:56.240 --> 0:02:59.160 which is what most people may think of when we've 0:02:59.240 --> 0:03:01.880 mentioned John's will. This is one of those moments too, 0:03:01.880 --> 0:03:05.200 where I feel like the podcast format is really at 0:03:05.240 --> 0:03:09.520 an advantage here because in our case, you know, like 0:03:09.639 --> 0:03:12.400 lots of the stuff that I've read about Lily, like 0:03:12.440 --> 0:03:15.720 you said, either focuses on one aspect of his work 0:03:16.200 --> 0:03:19.200 or another. Right, It's like it's either like the isolation 0:03:19.240 --> 0:03:23.160 tanks or it's just the dolphins. But I feel like 0:03:23.200 --> 0:03:25.799 we have the opportunity here to like gather a lot 0:03:25.840 --> 0:03:28.400 of different resources, come together and kind of try to 0:03:28.440 --> 0:03:32.160 piece it all together and figure out this like epic 0:03:32.240 --> 0:03:35.360 figure somehow, and especially the like like you said to 0:03:35.560 --> 0:03:37.720 like um. For those of you who don't know, there's 0:03:37.720 --> 0:03:41.600 been two feature films, at least two that we're made 0:03:41.680 --> 0:03:44.120 based on Lily as a character. The first was Day 0:03:44.160 --> 0:03:46.560 of the Dolphin with George C. Scott, and then the 0:03:46.600 --> 0:03:50.560 second one is Altered States, of Course, which is you know, 0:03:50.600 --> 0:03:53.320 we're huge fans of here, and it stars William Hurt, 0:03:53.400 --> 0:03:55.800 you know, of course as this Lily kind of figure 0:03:55.880 --> 0:03:59.480 who takes acid in isolation tanks and then finds himself 0:03:59.520 --> 0:04:04.360 the evolving basically right into various forms of proto humanity. Yeah, 0:04:04.400 --> 0:04:06.600 so he's he's he's a figure that had the castle 0:04:06.640 --> 0:04:10.280 a large shadow across our popular culture. And I think 0:04:10.320 --> 0:04:12.240 that can also be a stumbling block because you think 0:04:12.280 --> 0:04:14.840 of you might think of that older uh John C. 0:04:15.040 --> 0:04:19.520 Lily kind of a post hippie nut job with with 0:04:19.560 --> 0:04:23.960 a coonskin cap, talking about expanded consciousness and perhaps being 0:04:24.040 --> 0:04:27.800 something of a pariah. Uh, two individuals who were working 0:04:27.920 --> 0:04:31.159 in legitimate scientific areas that he was once a part of. Yeah, 0:04:31.160 --> 0:04:34.640 there were certainly people who did not embrace the direction 0:04:34.680 --> 0:04:36.839 that he went in towards the latter part of his career. 0:04:37.160 --> 0:04:39.320 But so this is what's interesting to me about him, 0:04:39.400 --> 0:04:41.719 especially like once we got into I knew the surface 0:04:41.800 --> 0:04:44.960 level stuff, but going back and looking at his early 0:04:45.040 --> 0:04:48.200 life and how he started off and how kind of 0:04:48.320 --> 0:04:52.400 standardized his scientific career was to begin with, it's really 0:04:52.440 --> 0:04:55.279 fascinating to see where he goes and the kind of 0:04:55.440 --> 0:04:57.960 journey that he takes everybody on. Yeah. Indeed, I mean, 0:04:58.040 --> 0:04:59.960 this is a guy that was trained and met us 0:05:00.040 --> 0:05:05.039 and psycho analysis, biophysics, um. And he went from being 0:05:05.080 --> 0:05:07.440 published as a researcher in scientific journals to writing his 0:05:07.480 --> 0:05:10.320 own books about spirituality and the self. And one of 0:05:10.320 --> 0:05:12.480 the things that's really important about Lily, I think to 0:05:12.640 --> 0:05:16.520 just like our general culture today, it's it's hard to 0:05:16.560 --> 0:05:18.440 think of this because it's from from my entire life. 0:05:18.440 --> 0:05:20.720 It's been this way. But people didn't used to think 0:05:20.760 --> 0:05:24.839 of dolphins as being intelligent mammals. That we're cute and 0:05:24.880 --> 0:05:27.280 cuddly and that we should try to keep from being 0:05:27.360 --> 0:05:29.360 killed in the ocean. Right, Yeah, that's right. I mean, 0:05:29.360 --> 0:05:31.240 you go back far enough. There are various myths that 0:05:31.279 --> 0:05:35.159 involve humans turning into dolphins or vice versa. But generally speaking, 0:05:35.240 --> 0:05:38.320 before the nineteen fifties, dolphins were a pest of fishermen. 0:05:38.640 --> 0:05:40.760 They were something. They were a fatty creature you might 0:05:40.800 --> 0:05:43.560 render down for various products, but nobody was giving a 0:05:43.600 --> 0:05:46.560 lot of thought to what they were thinking, or indeed, 0:05:46.600 --> 0:05:51.000 what their consciousness might consist of. Yeah, and so almost 0:05:51.040 --> 0:05:54.920 every account that I read about Lily traces his research 0:05:55.000 --> 0:05:59.760 with dolphins to how we treat dolphins today, even to 0:06:00.040 --> 0:06:01.839 you know, good or bad however you think of it 0:06:01.880 --> 0:06:03.880 of like theme parks of like Sea World and things 0:06:03.920 --> 0:06:07.120 like that, but like, uh, the interaction that human beings 0:06:07.160 --> 0:06:11.440 have with dolphins or other male uh mammals in the water, 0:06:11.520 --> 0:06:14.800 like whales, uh, you know, in in that kind of 0:06:14.800 --> 0:06:19.000 a setting, you know. Um, he really changed the way 0:06:19.040 --> 0:06:22.520 that we considered them as I guess partners on Earth 0:06:22.600 --> 0:06:24.440 is how he would probably put it. Right. Yeah, It's 0:06:24.440 --> 0:06:27.600 hard to imagine where we'd be right now, uh, considering 0:06:27.880 --> 0:06:31.160 dolphin intelligence without Lily. I mean, I mean, I think 0:06:31.160 --> 0:06:33.280 we would definitely get to this point where we we 0:06:33.360 --> 0:06:37.000 recognize the intelligence of the dolphin, uh and and even 0:06:37.600 --> 0:06:42.440 engaging discussions about its potential personhood. But would we have 0:06:42.520 --> 0:06:45.320 gotten there as quickly? Would we have would we have 0:06:45.360 --> 0:06:48.520 gotten there with as much media attention? And it all 0:06:48.600 --> 0:06:53.720 really came down to him wanting to map human consciousness, 0:06:54.200 --> 0:06:57.880 you know, the dolphin work, the isolation tanks, taking NSTI, 0:06:58.040 --> 0:07:01.960 all of it really boiled to his medical background and 0:07:02.040 --> 0:07:06.239 just trying to figure out, like the physicality of human 0:07:06.279 --> 0:07:10.080 consciousness where it was. Yeah, he in in his um 0:07:10.360 --> 0:07:12.880 later on, certainly by by the nineteen seventies, who would 0:07:12.880 --> 0:07:16.160 often talk about the province of the mind, which we 0:07:16.240 --> 0:07:19.000 reference in the title to this episode. Yeah. So here's 0:07:19.080 --> 0:07:21.400 the Lily quote that comes from you know what we 0:07:21.520 --> 0:07:23.800 what we based the title in the episode from He says, 0:07:24.080 --> 0:07:26.360 in the province of the mind, what one believes to 0:07:26.400 --> 0:07:30.560 be true is true or becomes true with certain limits 0:07:30.560 --> 0:07:35.080 to be found experientially and experimentally. These limbs are further 0:07:35.160 --> 0:07:38.560 beliefs to be transcended in the mind. There are no limits. 0:07:39.120 --> 0:07:41.480 That was in nineteen seventy two, so this was this 0:07:41.600 --> 0:07:45.280 was a post dolphin work going into LSD work, I'm assuming, Yeah, 0:07:45.280 --> 0:07:47.000 and I think it this is a It's a great 0:07:47.040 --> 0:07:50.080 quote because it mentions this idea of the province of 0:07:50.080 --> 0:07:52.559 the mind, something that he all of his work throughout 0:07:52.600 --> 0:07:54.880 his life, as you mentioned, seems to be questing for. 0:07:55.360 --> 0:08:00.360 And then it also touches on this idea of subjective truth, 0:08:00.760 --> 0:08:04.760 which becomes an increasingly important part of his work and 0:08:04.800 --> 0:08:09.440 at times a definite flaw in his scientific work. Right. Yeah, 0:08:09.520 --> 0:08:12.440 and it's especially important to consider too. I mean, like 0:08:12.560 --> 0:08:15.200 we say, his whole life here. I read an account 0:08:15.240 --> 0:08:18.120 that when he was sixteen years old, he was verst 0:08:18.160 --> 0:08:20.680 starting to think about this in journals and things like 0:08:20.720 --> 0:08:23.120 that that he was working on, like as a kid. 0:08:23.240 --> 0:08:25.920 This was something that concerned Lily up until his death. 0:08:27.520 --> 0:08:30.320 So let's, uh, let's let's back up a bit then 0:08:30.360 --> 0:08:33.600 and just deal with the Lily timeline. Let's talk about 0:08:33.640 --> 0:08:36.880 where he came from and uh and take listeners and 0:08:36.960 --> 0:08:40.000 ourselves on a journey through his life whereas much of 0:08:40.000 --> 0:08:43.199 it as we can actually digest in about an hour's time. Yeah, 0:08:43.200 --> 0:08:45.520 and I'll say this too before we get into it. 0:08:45.720 --> 0:08:48.040 I found that there were a lot of differing accounts too. 0:08:48.360 --> 0:08:50.959 I mean, he was alive at just the right moment 0:08:50.960 --> 0:08:53.600 in time where it was. It wasn't like we couldn't 0:08:53.640 --> 0:08:56.120 log his life as we do now with social media, 0:08:56.200 --> 0:08:59.040 you know what I mean. And there's like some different accounts. So, 0:08:59.120 --> 0:09:02.080 like I said, sixteen years old, he supposedly wrote this essay. 0:09:02.320 --> 0:09:06.400 He was born in nineteen fifteen in Saint Paul, Minnesota. Uh. 0:09:06.400 --> 0:09:10.040 And and this is the specific question that was quoted 0:09:10.040 --> 0:09:12.120 as being the title of his essay, how can the 0:09:12.200 --> 0:09:17.320 mind render itself sufficiently objective to study itself? That's pretty 0:09:17.360 --> 0:09:19.240 heavy for a sixteen year old. I don't think I 0:09:19.360 --> 0:09:23.120 had thoughts like that until much later. Yeah, that's that's 0:09:23.120 --> 0:09:26.559 a that that's he was thinking big for for that agent. 0:09:26.600 --> 0:09:29.439 Really Yeah, unless that's some like revisionist history on his part. 0:09:29.520 --> 0:09:31.640 But uh, the other thing that I thought was really 0:09:31.679 --> 0:09:34.520 interesting is my impression from the readings is that Lily 0:09:34.640 --> 0:09:37.360 came from a very wealthy family I think, uh, and 0:09:37.480 --> 0:09:40.480 his father, it sounds like, wanted him to become a banker, 0:09:40.920 --> 0:09:43.600 but Lily wanted to be a scientist, and so eventually 0:09:43.640 --> 0:09:45.840 his father kind of came around and supported him going 0:09:45.840 --> 0:09:49.760 to school to study science, but also backed him financially 0:09:49.800 --> 0:09:53.360 in some of his research after school as well. Yeah, 0:09:53.360 --> 0:09:55.320 that's the that's the sense that I get from some 0:09:55.440 --> 0:09:57.640 of the resources who are looking at uh. And I 0:09:57.679 --> 0:09:59.760 do have to to mention that, as far as we know, 0:09:59.800 --> 0:10:05.000 they're not a good, like solid concise biography out there, 0:10:05.040 --> 0:10:07.080 not yet. Hopefully somebody's working on it. There are some 0:10:07.200 --> 0:10:09.720 very fine resources that we used for this episode. Will 0:10:10.080 --> 0:10:12.040 cite those as we go. Yeah, this is a book 0:10:12.440 --> 0:10:17.079 slash movie dying to be made. Yeah. Yeah, I think that, 0:10:17.360 --> 0:10:19.680 like in the same way that characters like Reich that 0:10:19.679 --> 0:10:22.360 we've talked about on the show before Shulgun just make 0:10:22.440 --> 0:10:26.840 for great like potential fictionalizations. Uh. And I think you know, 0:10:26.920 --> 0:10:29.440 I just learned this after we recorded the Reich episode. 0:10:29.440 --> 0:10:32.520 There's a feature film coming out about Reich. Oh yeah, yeah. 0:10:32.760 --> 0:10:35.120 When I was searching for artwork for it, photos from 0:10:35.160 --> 0:10:39.160 the premier came out. Alright, So lially goes on. He 0:10:39.200 --> 0:10:43.760 gets his physics degree from cal Tech in receives a 0:10:43.840 --> 0:10:48.120 doctorate in medicine from the University of Pennsylvania two and 0:10:48.160 --> 0:10:52.280 as a faculty member, he studies biophysics and psycho analysis 0:10:52.360 --> 0:10:55.720 at the University of Pennsylvania's primarily interested in the physical 0:10:55.800 --> 0:10:59.439 structures of the brain where that the conscious self might 0:10:59.480 --> 0:11:02.559 be found. So that's pretty interesting, uh in that like 0:11:02.960 --> 0:11:05.679 he got his he got his doctorate in medicine, right, 0:11:05.720 --> 0:11:09.880 and then he continues to do research or take classes 0:11:09.880 --> 0:11:12.439 as well as he's a faculty member. Like my understanding 0:11:12.440 --> 0:11:16.439 was the psychoanalysis stuff wasn't quite yet in the field 0:11:16.840 --> 0:11:19.679 when he was in school, but he's still dabbling and 0:11:20.080 --> 0:11:22.640 learning more and adding everything to his resume. Yeah. From 0:11:22.640 --> 0:11:25.520 an early point, we're seeing in a guy who has 0:11:25.600 --> 0:11:28.160 this goal in mind, this mystery that he wants to crack, 0:11:28.440 --> 0:11:31.240 and he's gonna throw everything he has at it. And 0:11:31.280 --> 0:11:35.560 he's gonna throw he's gonna utilize what whatever tools he 0:11:35.600 --> 0:11:40.720 can draw on, be they uh, disciplines, pharmaceuticals, technologies. We 0:11:40.720 --> 0:11:43.240 see this throughout his life. Yeah, and in some cases 0:11:43.280 --> 0:11:45.440 it's also like where he's going to get the support from. Right. 0:11:45.440 --> 0:11:48.000 I think all of us who have like large scale 0:11:48.080 --> 0:11:50.880 creative endeavors that we're trying to push and can't find 0:11:50.960 --> 0:11:54.480 necessarily the financial backing end up making compromises and uh, 0:11:54.679 --> 0:11:58.360 come World War two, Lillie ends up doing research. Uh. 0:11:58.559 --> 0:12:01.600 Mainly it sounds like on the zology of high altitude 0:12:01.679 --> 0:12:05.960 flying uh, specifically for the Air Force, and he was 0:12:06.160 --> 0:12:12.200 inventing different devices to measure gas gas pressure for those purposes. Um. 0:12:12.280 --> 0:12:14.120 And this is one of the first times apparently that 0:12:14.160 --> 0:12:17.400 he used himself as a guinea pig uh lily at 0:12:17.400 --> 0:12:19.240 which he would go on to do quite a bit 0:12:19.320 --> 0:12:20.920 later in his career. In fact, I think he had 0:12:20.960 --> 0:12:23.839 sort of a uh like an ethos surrounding that right 0:12:23.920 --> 0:12:26.280 that I can't remember who it was, but I read 0:12:26.320 --> 0:12:29.920 that he um. He he took this from another like 0:12:30.000 --> 0:12:33.240 kind of big thinker scientist who basically said, like, if 0:12:33.280 --> 0:12:36.319 you're not willing to experiment on yourself, then you shouldn't 0:12:36.360 --> 0:12:39.840 be willing to experiment on other human beings. Uh. And 0:12:39.920 --> 0:12:42.280 this seems to be the case here where he participated 0:12:42.280 --> 0:12:44.840 in an experiment where he was studying the effects of 0:12:44.960 --> 0:12:49.480 explosive decompression on pilots at high altitudes. Uh. And by 0:12:49.520 --> 0:12:52.480 all accounts that I read, this was something that could 0:12:52.480 --> 0:12:55.600 have killed him, but he went about and did it anyways. 0:12:55.600 --> 0:12:58.360 And this is in the thirties going into the forties, 0:12:58.520 --> 0:13:00.800 all right, so after the war or we're getting into 0:13:00.840 --> 0:13:02.959 the post War War two area, we're getting into the 0:13:03.040 --> 0:13:06.920 nineteen fifties at a time uh increasingly defined by Cold 0:13:07.000 --> 0:13:11.560 War paranoia. UH. During this area that literally turns to neuroscience, 0:13:11.559 --> 0:13:14.840 which is a logical next step in this quest for consciousness. Right. 0:13:15.200 --> 0:13:17.720 And he's motivated in a large part by pioneering brain 0:13:17.760 --> 0:13:22.319 surgeon Wilder Penfield at this point. UH. And in short, 0:13:22.400 --> 0:13:25.880 what he ends up doing is he applies electronic engineering 0:13:25.960 --> 0:13:28.880 to the monitoring and mapping of the central nervous system, 0:13:29.040 --> 0:13:32.520 again drawing on the best technology available at the time 0:13:32.880 --> 0:13:35.360 to try and crack this nut of consciousness. And what 0:13:35.440 --> 0:13:37.280 I had read this is one of the first stances 0:13:37.280 --> 0:13:41.480 of his father, sorry, instances of his father funding him. 0:13:41.600 --> 0:13:44.240 His father helped him pay for the design of something 0:13:44.280 --> 0:13:47.520 he called the baba Tron, which was a device for 0:13:47.640 --> 0:13:51.679 recording the impulses from within a rabbit's brain and they 0:13:51.679 --> 0:13:55.120 would project these impulses up onto like a television screen 0:13:55.280 --> 0:13:58.800 as waves. UM. So the Babatron included an array of 0:13:58.880 --> 0:14:01.400 sensors that where this is something we're gonna come back 0:14:01.440 --> 0:14:04.119 to over and over again with Lily basically putting electrodes 0:14:04.120 --> 0:14:06.120 on the surface of the brain of different animals and 0:14:06.280 --> 0:14:08.920 or human beings. Uh. And in nineteen fifty one, he 0:14:08.960 --> 0:14:12.480 published a paper that showed how to display these patterns 0:14:12.480 --> 0:14:16.680 in such a way projecting brain electrical activity on a 0:14:16.760 --> 0:14:19.920 television like screen. Uh. And I recently spent some time 0:14:19.960 --> 0:14:23.000 in the hospital. I had a family member and I 0:14:23.080 --> 0:14:25.400 see you, and I thought, wow, like, think of the 0:14:25.640 --> 0:14:29.080 just the standard hospital machinery we have that are like 0:14:29.520 --> 0:14:34.120 measuring and showing us things like oxygen levels and and uh, 0:14:34.400 --> 0:14:38.120 breathing and and and brain activity. You know, Lily was 0:14:38.160 --> 0:14:40.120 one of the pioneers, and that you can thank him 0:14:40.160 --> 0:14:43.800 for that. This is a guy who who really did 0:14:43.840 --> 0:14:48.320 like impact our understanding of medicine and of thought. And 0:14:48.960 --> 0:14:52.880 you know, despite where he went down further in his career, 0:14:52.960 --> 0:14:56.720 he really did have like some contributions. Yeah, down or 0:14:56.840 --> 0:14:58.680 or out or out, Yeah, however you want to look 0:14:58.720 --> 0:15:01.320 at it. Absolutely. From here he moves on to the 0:15:01.440 --> 0:15:05.560 National Institutes of Mental Health or NIM. Uh. And this 0:15:05.600 --> 0:15:07.600 is an area where he begins to get into a 0:15:07.680 --> 0:15:10.920 lot of interesting and and at times kind of creepy work. Yeah. 0:15:10.960 --> 0:15:13.200 And I read an interesting thing that said that one 0:15:13.200 --> 0:15:15.560 of the reasons why he specifically went for this research 0:15:15.640 --> 0:15:18.440 position with NIM was that it gave him access to 0:15:18.480 --> 0:15:22.840 both the National Institute of Neurological Diseases because that would 0:15:22.880 --> 0:15:25.760 give him access to resources about the physical brain. But 0:15:25.880 --> 0:15:28.520 it also gave him access to the National Institute of 0:15:28.560 --> 0:15:31.320 Mental Health, which focused on the mind, and he really 0:15:31.320 --> 0:15:35.480 wanted to combine the two. Uh. And he experimented on 0:15:35.520 --> 0:15:38.320 living brains with all these different techniques he developed. So 0:15:38.800 --> 0:15:40.560 you know, we've got the rabbits, we talked about that, 0:15:40.600 --> 0:15:42.760 but then he moved on to monkeys. His goal was 0:15:42.840 --> 0:15:46.800 to stimulate monkey brains without causing trauma or damage to 0:15:46.840 --> 0:15:49.240 their brain tissue. So he was one of the first 0:15:49.360 --> 0:15:52.400 scientists to locate uh, this is a monkey brain, not 0:15:52.440 --> 0:15:55.440 a human brain, obviously, but he located their pain and 0:15:55.520 --> 0:15:58.960 pleasure centers, and his work there allowed him to map 0:15:59.000 --> 0:16:03.080 their neural networks and to link sensory events, muscle movement, 0:16:03.120 --> 0:16:06.240 and other behaviors related to the activity in their brain. 0:16:06.560 --> 0:16:08.280 This is going to be important later on when we 0:16:08.280 --> 0:16:11.280 get into dolphins. Yeah, and this is my understanding. Some 0:16:11.480 --> 0:16:15.680 it's pretty invasive surgery at this point in experimentation, and 0:16:15.760 --> 0:16:20.360 he spends essentially a decade working on it. Here uh again, 0:16:20.400 --> 0:16:26.080 connecting invasive of vivisections of the cranium and this is 0:16:26.120 --> 0:16:30.880 where things get into some creepier territory. Um. Again, he's 0:16:30.960 --> 0:16:33.440 laser focused on his goal, but he is an employ 0:16:33.560 --> 0:16:36.320 of NIM. He's working in the in the time of 0:16:36.320 --> 0:16:40.560 of nineteen fifties cold war paranoia. It's US versus the Soviets. 0:16:40.600 --> 0:16:46.000 There's they're all these fears of of of mind control, brainwashing, uh, 0:16:46.200 --> 0:16:51.680 all sorts of strange counter espionage techniques. And according to D. 0:16:51.920 --> 0:16:55.760 Graham Burnett's excellent paper A Mind in Water, which is 0:16:55.760 --> 0:16:58.480 published in Ryan Magazine and it's available online, will include 0:16:58.480 --> 0:17:00.960 a link to it on the landing page, says Lily 0:17:01.080 --> 0:17:03.360 later claimed not to care for this sort of thing, 0:17:03.600 --> 0:17:06.800 but in his prime as a government employee, he had 0:17:06.960 --> 0:17:10.600 high level security clearance. J Edgar Hoover knew him by 0:17:10.760 --> 0:17:15.040 name and was actively involved in research into brainwashing or 0:17:15.160 --> 0:17:19.479 reprogramming as it was then called, among the cognizanty sleep 0:17:19.520 --> 0:17:25.760 deprivation and operant controlled of animals with wires implanted in 0:17:25.800 --> 0:17:28.720 the pain centers of their gray matter. Unquote. Wow, so 0:17:28.840 --> 0:17:30.560 this gets back to when we were talking about we 0:17:30.760 --> 0:17:35.199 three on the animal weaponry thing. So yeah, I can 0:17:35.240 --> 0:17:37.360 imagine with all the things we learned from that episode 0:17:37.359 --> 0:17:40.200 of like people stuffing bats into bombs and trying to 0:17:40.240 --> 0:17:42.600 figure out ways to use bees to attack people that 0:17:43.320 --> 0:17:45.600 of course they would be looking at ways to try 0:17:45.640 --> 0:17:49.280 to stimulate their brains as well, and there, yeah, the goal. 0:17:49.320 --> 0:17:52.040 He was not just animals but humans. In an unpublished 0:17:52.080 --> 0:17:56.400 paper of Lily's titled Special Considerations of Modified Human Agents 0:17:56.440 --> 0:17:59.480 as Reconnaissance and Intelligence Devices, I really don't have to 0:17:59.520 --> 0:18:02.400 go much further, and then I just title, But he 0:18:02.440 --> 0:18:06.159 talked about such things as the quote covert and relatively 0:18:06.280 --> 0:18:10.639 safe implantation of electrodes into the human brain for the 0:18:10.680 --> 0:18:15.760 push button control of the totality of motivation and of consciousness. 0:18:16.160 --> 0:18:20.040 I wonder how much Lily's sort of like beginning work 0:18:20.240 --> 0:18:23.919 set the stage for brain computer interface work, you know 0:18:23.960 --> 0:18:27.080 that's being studied today, because that's obviously like a big 0:18:27.200 --> 0:18:31.320 field of of inquiry right now. Yeah, I mean to 0:18:31.320 --> 0:18:35.640 to whatever extent his his ideas here were actually applicable 0:18:36.000 --> 0:18:38.520 given that the technology of the time, and he's certainly 0:18:38.560 --> 0:18:42.080 foreshadowing where the technology would go. He's certainly dreaming in 0:18:42.119 --> 0:18:45.240 the in the direction that we're that we're still headed. 0:18:45.600 --> 0:18:46.879 So one of the things that I was trying to 0:18:46.880 --> 0:18:48.639 figure out what we're doing the research was whether or 0:18:48.680 --> 0:18:51.879 not these were pain free methods. And I believe later 0:18:52.119 --> 0:18:55.600 in his career he definitely wanted to get to a point, right. 0:18:55.640 --> 0:18:57.600 Like I mentioned earlier that you know, his goal was 0:18:57.640 --> 0:18:59.399 not to cause trauma and the monkeys and not to 0:18:59.520 --> 0:19:02.840 damage their brain tissue. But I imagine it wasn't comfortable 0:19:02.920 --> 0:19:06.119 having these electrodes stuck in their brains, right, Yeah. And 0:19:06.280 --> 0:19:09.840 my understanding it also depended on what he was working on. So, um, 0:19:09.880 --> 0:19:14.920 you could use anesthetics on certain animals, but as we'll discuss, 0:19:14.960 --> 0:19:18.439 there are other animals that that simply stop breathing if 0:19:18.480 --> 0:19:20.680 you put them under an anesthetic, right, Yeah, And there's 0:19:20.720 --> 0:19:25.600 always there's a very interesting like, despite his profound respect 0:19:25.720 --> 0:19:28.280 for dolphins later on, there's some weird stuff that goes 0:19:28.320 --> 0:19:30.520 on with the dolphin research as well too, in terms 0:19:30.560 --> 0:19:33.560 of like kind of treating them humanely. Yeah, and uh, 0:19:33.640 --> 0:19:36.600 and and certainly at this point in his career he 0:19:36.680 --> 0:19:40.720 has he's a very unsentimental guy. He's laser focused on 0:19:40.720 --> 0:19:45.160 this consciousness to enigma. Uh, but he's not necessarily he's 0:19:45.160 --> 0:19:48.399 not he's certainly not the sort of hippie mythic figure 0:19:48.600 --> 0:19:51.760 counterculture figure we see later on quite the opposite. This 0:19:51.920 --> 0:19:54.680 is a guy who's on first name basis with Jaguar Hoover. 0:19:54.960 --> 0:19:57.920 He's very much a part of the establishment and kind 0:19:57.920 --> 0:20:00.440 of a scary part of the establishment. Yeah, and he 0:20:00.720 --> 0:20:02.159 is going to do what needs to be done to 0:20:02.160 --> 0:20:07.560 get the results right. So it's during this creepy period 0:20:08.080 --> 0:20:11.879 that literally first learns from an oceanographer colleague that the 0:20:11.960 --> 0:20:15.520 largest brains are found in small tooth whales. Intrigued, he 0:20:15.520 --> 0:20:17.920 sets out to implant electrodes in the brains of captive 0:20:17.960 --> 0:20:22.120 dolphins at Florida's Marine Studios. Now this place still exists 0:20:22.320 --> 0:20:25.560 today under the name Marine Land of Florida. Some of 0:20:25.560 --> 0:20:27.199 our listeners have been there and can speak to it. 0:20:27.520 --> 0:20:31.000 But at the time they specialized in B movies. Really 0:20:31.320 --> 0:20:34.120 of particular note, they shot the Creature from the Black 0:20:34.200 --> 0:20:40.399 Lagoon here and Revenge of the Creature from NT WOW. 0:20:40.520 --> 0:20:44.240 So John C. Lily was like peripherally involved with like 0:20:44.840 --> 0:20:49.359 Universal Horror, specifically the Creature from the Black Lagoon. I 0:20:49.359 --> 0:20:52.040 would I think you might have mentioned this before the podcast. 0:20:52.040 --> 0:20:53.919 How cool would it be for them to be like 0:20:53.920 --> 0:20:57.800 a Creature of the Black Lagoon remake that like mixes 0:20:57.840 --> 0:21:01.280 in some of the John C. Lily ideas of you know, 0:21:01.359 --> 0:21:06.600 both dolphin human communication, but also isolation tanks and hallucinogenics. Yeah, 0:21:06.720 --> 0:21:08.240 I mean, and in fact, we'll get back to the 0:21:08.280 --> 0:21:10.520 creature from the Black Lagoon in a minute, because the 0:21:10.520 --> 0:21:14.200 connection between Lily and the creature he is even closer 0:21:14.240 --> 0:21:18.359 than you might be thinking right now. Okay, cool, cool, Okay, 0:21:18.400 --> 0:21:21.200 So he he engages in this work, right he's uh, 0:21:21.280 --> 0:21:24.360 he's he's putting the electrodes on the dolphins brains. One 0:21:24.359 --> 0:21:26.919 of the problems here, as I mentioned, is that dolphins 0:21:27.119 --> 0:21:30.000 stop breathing when they're under anesthetic, and this has to 0:21:30.040 --> 0:21:32.960 do with the conscious nature of dolphin respirations that it's 0:21:33.040 --> 0:21:34.840 it's not as as much of a you know, a 0:21:35.560 --> 0:21:40.000 subconscious activity is as it is for us surface dwellers. 0:21:40.080 --> 0:21:44.800 Uh So, it's it's pretty rough work. Dolphins are dying 0:21:44.880 --> 0:21:48.240 during the experiments, but one of them, before it passes, 0:21:48.520 --> 0:21:52.520 makes a series of sounds, and Lily has this really 0:21:52.560 --> 0:21:55.960 this epiphany. He he feels he's listening to the sound 0:21:56.000 --> 0:21:58.520