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Speaker 1: Hey, you welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind. My

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Speaker 1: name is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick, and it's Saturday.

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Speaker 1: I think we're supposed to venture into the vault, but

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Speaker 1: I'm hearing some odd creaking and squealing of metal in

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Speaker 1: there that is giving me pause. Ah. Yes, we're going

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Speaker 1: to be talking about Talos, the the automaton of of

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Speaker 1: Greek myth in this episode. This, I have to say,

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Speaker 1: Uh an episode that air January two, two thousand eighteen.

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Speaker 1: One of my favorite episodes of I think one of

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Speaker 1: mine too. This one was a lot of fun. Uh.

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Speaker 1: And you know who would have thought that the best

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Speaker 1: traditions of thinking about robot life go all the way

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Speaker 1: back to ancient Greece. It's true. Let's pull the plug

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Speaker 1: out let that ecore drain. Welcome to Stuff to Blow

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Speaker 1: your Mind from how Stuff Works dot Com. Hey are

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Speaker 1: you welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind? My name

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Speaker 1: is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick, and today we're

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Speaker 1: gonna be talking about themes of technology in ancient Greek literature.

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Speaker 1: But before we get there, we have to go to

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Speaker 1: the slightly related, actually very related topic of what's your

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Speaker 1: favorite killer robot movie, Robert? Oh, well, you know, outside

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Speaker 1: of some of the obvious choices from say, you know,

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Speaker 1: the Terminator movies, can't say Terminator or even the RoboCop movies,

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Speaker 1: you get into a weird territory. Is that a robot?

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Speaker 1: Is it a cyborg? Right? I would say my easy

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Speaker 1: pick is the killer red robot Maximilian from the Disney

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Speaker 1: movie The Black Hole. Oh yeah, I've never seen it.

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Speaker 1: Oh he's terrifying because he just he floats around feet

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Speaker 1: do not touch the surface of the ship and has

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Speaker 1: his menacing red visor that just peers into your soul

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Speaker 1: and has the spinning blade hands that it utilizes to

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Speaker 1: at one point murder Anthony Perkins and cold Blood No

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Speaker 1: Anthony Perkins. Yeah, well after Psycho, I guess he had it. Well,

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Speaker 1: you know, and this movie is great. In this movie,

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Speaker 1: you felt sorry for him if he showed up showing

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Speaker 1: up in Psycho. Other than that would that would be

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Speaker 1: a different matter altogether. Now I have probably got to

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Speaker 1: go to the movie. Chopping Mall is a eighties robots

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Speaker 1: slasher set in a shopping mall at night where security

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Speaker 1: robots go haywire. I think their computer gets struck by

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Speaker 1: lightning or something, and then they decide, well, they've got

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Speaker 1: to kill all the people who are hanging out overnight

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Speaker 1: in the in the mall. That is a delicious movie. Yeah.

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Speaker 1: But also, how about You'll Brenner in the original West World.

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Speaker 1: Oh yeah, he's super menacing and I'm up until his

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Speaker 1: face falls off, I guess. But before Westworld was like

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Speaker 1: a thoughtful HBO series, it was a cheesy old movie

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Speaker 1: with your You'll Brenner pulling guns on people. Yeah, yeah,

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Speaker 1: he was. He was terrifying. He I mean, you Brenner

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Speaker 1: was always entertaining, but he was kind of made to

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Speaker 1: play a killer, emotionless robot. I would say some of

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Speaker 1: the best killer robots stuff in movies. When killer robots

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Speaker 1: are scary, the fact that they're scary comes in not

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Speaker 1: from malice or ill intent like it might in a

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Speaker 1: monster or in a human villain or something like that.

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Speaker 1: The great thing about a killer robot in a scary

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Speaker 1: movie is that it's terror is derived from the fact

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Speaker 1: that it has no will of its own or no intention.

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Speaker 1: It's just sort of like an efficient, emotionless killing machine.

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Speaker 1: All it has is directive and it it absolutely will

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Speaker 1: not stop until it achieves it. Now, we obviously think

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Speaker 1: of themes like this emerging in the fiction primarily of

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Speaker 1: the twentieth century. Right, that's when we think science fiction

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Speaker 1: in earnest really shows up the way we know it now.

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Speaker 1: I know you have Jules Verned before that, but the

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Speaker 1: twentieth century is when you really start getting your killer

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Speaker 1: robots everywhere. But today we're going to go back. Oh yes,

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Speaker 1: we're gonna go back to a fabulous example of what

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Speaker 1: is perhaps the very first killer robot that humans ever

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Speaker 1: dreamt up. And it it's not from the twentieth century.

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Speaker 1: It's not from the nineteenth or even eight. It is

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Speaker 1: from the ancient Greek world. And its name is Talos. Talos, yes,

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Speaker 1: the man of Bronze, the bronze automaton. I want to

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Speaker 1: quote from Edith Hamilton's version of the Classic story of

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Speaker 1: the Quest for the Golden Fleece, now Edith Hamilton's Classic Mythology,

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Speaker 1: that this is a great old textbook on Greek mythology.

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Speaker 1: If you haven't had a chance to check it out,

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Speaker 1: it's just wonderful to leave through. Every personal library needs

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Speaker 1: a copy of this. But so she does a really

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Speaker 1: good job of taking disparate elements of story traditions and

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Speaker 1: sort of pasting them together into composite, synthetic versions of

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Speaker 1: the stories. So I want to sort of summarize the

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Speaker 1: Quest for the Golden Fleece. You can't hit all the

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Speaker 1: great points, but here's how it goes. So you've got

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Speaker 1: this young hero Jason, and in order to reclaim his

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Speaker 1: rightful kingdom from a usurper king, Jason is on a

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Speaker 1: quest to retrieve a sacred artifact, which is a golden

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Speaker 1: fleece from a magic ram that saved the life of

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Speaker 1: a Greek prints long ago. And he's accompanied by a

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Speaker 1: crew of other heroes known as the Argonauts. This is

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Speaker 1: where we get Jason and the Argonauts, and on the

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Speaker 1: way to retrieve the artifact, he has to face many

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Speaker 1: trials with his companions. One of the trials that Hamilton's

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Speaker 1: talks about is how Hercules is on the on the

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Speaker 1: ship with him and hercules friend gets yanked down into

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Speaker 1: a spring by this nymph type creature and Hercules is

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Speaker 1: roaming around the woods trying to find him and eventually

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Speaker 1: gets lost and wanders off. So you would think, you know,

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Speaker 1: you got Hercules and your crew, You're set but it

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Speaker 1: turns out he's easily distracted. Yes. Another trial is when

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Speaker 1: Jason and the Argonauts have to battle with evil harpies

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Speaker 1: on behalf of this wretched old man who has the

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Speaker 1: gift of future site. So the old man is a prophet,

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Speaker 1: but he's been cursed so that anytime he goes to

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Speaker 1: eat some food, harpies zoomed down down out of the

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Speaker 1: sky and they terrorize him, and they foul the food

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Speaker 1: he's eating. I'm not sure exactly what they do to it.

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Speaker 1: It's they're described as foul smelling, so maybe they just

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Speaker 1: put him off fit well, and I'm just imagining just

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Speaker 1: a tussle of harpy feathers and and harpy excrement and

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Speaker 1: just all manner of nastiness. Yeah, And so they have

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Speaker 1: to sail their ship through some crashing rocks and all

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Speaker 1: all kinds of stuff like that. But eventually Jason is

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Speaker 1: able to capture the artifacts the Golden Fleece, but only

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Speaker 1: with the help of the powerful witch Princess Medea. Uh,

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Speaker 1: one of the greatest sorceresses in all of fiction media.

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Speaker 1: Is awesome. So she has fallen in love with him,

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Speaker 1: but not entirely of her own volition, because she was

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Speaker 1: compelled into love by an arrow of Cupid, because Aphrodite

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Speaker 1: intervened on his behalf. So after they get the fleece,

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Speaker 1: Jason and Medeia and the rest of the crew of

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Speaker 1: the Argo or sailing towards Jason's home. And on the

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Speaker 1: journey they passed by the island of Crete, and here

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Speaker 1: I want to read a direct quote from Hamilton's telling

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Speaker 1: of the story. Next came Crete, where they would have

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Speaker 1: landed but for Medea. She told them that Talus lived there,

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Speaker 1: the last man left of the ancient Bronze race, a

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Speaker 1: creature made all of bronze except one ankle, where alone

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Speaker 1: he was vulnerable. Even as she spoke, he appeared terrible

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Speaker 1: to behold, and threatened to crush the ship with rocks

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Speaker 1: if they drew nearer. They rested on their oars, and Medea, kneeling,

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Speaker 1: prayed to the hounds of Hades to come and destroy him.

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Speaker 1: The dread powers of evil heard her, as the bronze

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Speaker 1: man lifted a pointed crag to hurl it at the Argo.

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Speaker 1: He grazed his ankle and the blood gushed forth until

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Speaker 1: he sank and died. Then the heroes could land and

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Speaker 1: refresh themselves for the voyage still before them. Now, this

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Speaker 1: is only one telling of the story of Talos, the

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Speaker 1: mighty Man of Bronze, And to get a little bit

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Speaker 1: more detail, I think we should look at a translation

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Speaker 1: of the text of the story as told by Apollonius

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Speaker 1: of Rhodes in his work the Argonautica, which is one

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Speaker 1: version of of this story I've just been talking about. Yes,

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Speaker 1: Apollonius rights he was of the stock of bronze, of

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Speaker 1: the men's spring from ash trees, the last left among

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Speaker 1: the sons of the gods, and the sons of Chronos

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Speaker 1: gave him to Europa to be the warder of Crete

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Speaker 1: and destride around the island thrice a day with his

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Speaker 1: feet of bronze. Now, in all the rest of his

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Speaker 1: body and limbs he was fashioned of bronze and invulnerable.

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Speaker 1: But beneath the sinew of his ankle was a blood

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Speaker 1: red vein, and this, with its issue of life and death,

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Speaker 1: was covered by a thin skin. Now, so you've got

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Speaker 1: a bronze guy. You got a bronze guy, and he

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Speaker 1: has this weak point in his his his ankle, very

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Speaker 1: much like Achilles. The legend of Achilles also weak only

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Speaker 1: in his ankle, his heel, right, because that's where he

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Speaker 1: was held as he was dipped into into the river sticks.

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Speaker 1: But we get a different explanation for the vulnerability in

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Speaker 1: this story. Now it's a technological vulnerability. Yeah, And I

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Speaker 1: think this is this is the key, and this is

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Speaker 1: something we're going to discuss over and over in in

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Speaker 1: this episode. Is that it's easy to just dismiss this

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Speaker 1: tale because Talus does not have other adventures. He basically

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Speaker 1: shows up kind of like a Dungeon and Dragons random

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Speaker 1: encounter and he's dispatched. The main story about him is

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Speaker 1: his death right. And you can also say, well, Italy

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Speaker 1: sounds a lot like Achilles. It's kind of like a

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Speaker 1: bronze It's like a robot knockoff of Achilles to a

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Speaker 1: certain extent. But when you really start digging into it,

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Speaker 1: the technological aspect of this is absolutely phenomenal. Now, one

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Speaker 1: great source on the tradition of the Talus character is

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Speaker 1: the author Merlin Paris, who wrote the article Talos and Dadalus,

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Speaker 1: a Review of the authorship of the Abominable Bronze Man

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Speaker 1: in the Ceylon Journal of Humanities from nineteen seventy one

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Speaker 1: and this is a fantastic article, so we will bring

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Speaker 1: him up several times throughout this episode. Now, one thing

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Speaker 1: Paris points out is that not all versions of the

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Speaker 1: Talus story described Talus exactly the same. Sometimes his body

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Speaker 1: he has different features or characteristics depending on who the

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Speaker 1: author is, Yes, and is we'll discuss. Even the size fluctuates.

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Speaker 1: One thing we always have to remember with Greek myths

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Speaker 1: in particular is that they evolve. I mean, all myths

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Speaker 1: are subject to change over time and over place, depending

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Speaker 1: on who's telling the tale and when they are telling it.

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Speaker 1: And that's certainly the case with Greek mythology. So for example,

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Speaker 1: Apollonius of Rhodes, who was writing in the third century,

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Speaker 1: had said that this this vein, this vein inside him,

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Speaker 1: was only apparent under the sinew of his ankle, right,

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Speaker 1: the one ankle. Yeah, But then there are other accounts

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Speaker 1: that say that it's stretched from the neck down to

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Speaker 1: both ankles. So that was Appolodorus, right, Yes, So this

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Speaker 1: vein is full of what's known as ichor, which in

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Speaker 1: Greek myth is the lifeblood of the gods. Sometimes it's

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Speaker 1: described as golden instead of red, though, and most of

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Speaker 1: the stories I've seen about tall Us. It is described

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Speaker 1: as red in the Iliad. When the gods, for example Aphrodite,

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Speaker 1: are cut or dabbed with spears. They can be harmed,

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Speaker 1: their skin can be pierced, and they leak fluid. But

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Speaker 1: the fluid they leak is not blood but ecore. So

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Speaker 1: to quote from the Iliad, quote the point tore through

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Speaker 1: the ambrosial robe which the graces had woven for Aphrodite,

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Speaker 1: and pierce the skin between her wrist and the palm

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Speaker 1: of her hand, so that the immortal blood or echore

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Speaker 1: that flows in the veins of the blessed gods came

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Speaker 1: pouring from the wound. For the gods do not eat

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Speaker 1: bread nor drink wine, hence they have no blood such

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Speaker 1: as ours and our immortal. I love the conflicting ideas here,

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Speaker 1: like the idea that the god can be injured and

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Speaker 1: the god can bleed, but they are in some sense immortal.

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Speaker 1: They have bodies, they can leak fluid, they can be hurt,

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Speaker 1: but the idea of immortality is somehow more bound up

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Speaker 1: in what goes into their body and what comes out

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Speaker 1: of it than what can be done to it. Yes,

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Speaker 1: and it's it's important to note here that this does

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Speaker 1: not mean Talus is a god. All all of counts

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Speaker 1: indicate that he is a manufactured thing. But of course

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Speaker 1: the manufacturer changes depending on the different tales. But but

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Speaker 1: still he is. He is like this artificial creation that

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Speaker 1: has been filled with life because he's been filled with

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Speaker 1: the core. So the ecre maybe for for the bronze men,

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Speaker 1: Talus is not essential to his nature, but is something

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Speaker 1: that has been used to give him the properties he has,

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Speaker 1: maybe the properties of life for animation. Right, yeah, this

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Speaker 1: it's the gasoline for your large bronze death gollum, the

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Speaker 1: oil in the car. Now this makes me think about

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Speaker 1: how both monsters and robots and fiction are often identified

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Speaker 1: by the different color of their blood. I think about

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Speaker 1: like the Aliens and the X Files that have green blood,

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Speaker 1: or you know, it's not just the X Files. I

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Speaker 1: think about it. There's a great scene in Fright Night

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Speaker 1: where there's a guy who you just think is like

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Speaker 1: a normal vampire, is familiar, but then he starts bleeding

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Speaker 1: and I think his blood is green? Is that right?

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Speaker 1: I believe so? Yeah. But anyway, it's it's all all

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Speaker 1: all over the place in fiction. But it's not just

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Speaker 1: monsters as robots too. I think about ash spraying the

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Speaker 1: milk white blood everywhere an alien when he gets bashed up,

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Speaker 1: and I think this goes to the deep metaphorical understanding

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Speaker 1: we have of blood as like the essence of a person,

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Speaker 1: in the sense that close family members, which in material

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Speaker 1: terms are those animals with which you share the most

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Speaker 1: essential genetic similarity, are quote your blood indeed, And of

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Speaker 1: course it's also worth noting that I believe film ratings

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Speaker 1: sometimes come into play. I've I've read that if you

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Speaker 1: have a humanoid spouting green, pink, white, or say amber blood,

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Speaker 1: you can still earn yourself with PG. Thirteen. But if

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Speaker 1: it's if the if the stuff is red, then you're

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Speaker 1: probably gonna get an r. Oh wow, you know I

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Speaker 1: was gonna say, well, I wonder if that played a

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Speaker 1: role in it's in its use in the Iliad, But no,

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Speaker 1: the iliots full of blood. They didn't shy away from

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Speaker 1: blood there. Oh well, without getting into the whole issue

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Speaker 1: of of colors in the works of Homer, right, that's

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Speaker 1: an entirely different maybe for a different day. So Talos,

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Speaker 1: so we've got him as this bronze man made of

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Speaker 1: bronze he's got this vein of ecore somewhere in his body,

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Speaker 1: going down to his ankle or both ankles, that contains

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Speaker 1: this lifeblood or essential ethereal liquid inside the gods that

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Speaker 1: has animated this bronze creature to some extent. And he

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Speaker 1: stands on the island throwing rocks at any ship that

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Speaker 1: tries to dock. We saw in Apollonius Tail that he

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Speaker 1: apparently runs around the island of crete three times a day,

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Speaker 1: three times a day, and it is impossible. I was

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Speaker 1: tempted to do the math on it, or I was

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Speaker 1: actually kind of surprised that nobody else has a paper

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Speaker 1: out there breaking down exactly how fast and how large

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Speaker 1: Talos would have to be to pull this off. But

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Speaker 1: that's not the only thing that Talous can do. So

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Speaker 1: he can curl rocks at your ship, But what if

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Speaker 1: you come ashore? Does he still pose a risk? Then? Oh?

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Speaker 1: Does he? Ever? He has this this beautifully grotesque superpower

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Speaker 1: of being able to apparently jump into the fire, heat

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Speaker 1: its body up, and then come out and embrace the enemy.

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Speaker 1: So here, so the enemy soldiers say they've landed. Here

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Speaker 1: comes Talis leaping out of the fire, applies a huge

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Speaker 1: bear hug and just immolates you in his embrace. And

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Speaker 1: according to that's that's sick, that's amazing. And it gets

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Speaker 1: even better according to to Merlin Paris. Uh. Some argue

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Speaker 1: that the term sardonic grin may have originated with the

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Speaker 1: victims of this death. This at least according to Simonides,

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Speaker 1: who wrote, the Talis resided in Sardinia before coming to Crete,

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Speaker 1: and he had already destroyed many of the Sardinians, presumably

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Speaker 1: leaving them with peeled back, appealed back grin of of

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Speaker 1: you know, of of the burnt gag. Yeah, the idea

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Speaker 1: of the grimace And and this is a big question

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Speaker 1: actually in the etymology of this term. Where does the

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Speaker 1: idea of the sardonic grin come from? Or the resist sardonicus,

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Speaker 1: which I think actually literally means sardonic laughter, not sardonic grin,

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Speaker 1: But the ideas get conflated in the history of the terms. Um,

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Speaker 1: so yeah, yeah, where does this idea come from? Now?

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Speaker 1: Another version I've heard, so one is that he is

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Speaker 1: crushing the Sardinians, and he's crushing them and burning them

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Speaker 1: with his red hot embrace, and that in their death

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Speaker 1: their grimaces turned into grins. But then also I Paris

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Speaker 1: talks about the idea that the grin goes to the

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Speaker 1: robot itself, right that this that Talos would grin have

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Speaker 1: this creepy grin when he was hugging people to death

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Speaker 1: with his burning arms. Another version of the explanation for this,

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Speaker 1: which is kind of a side note from Talis. But

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Speaker 1: I thought it was interesting, so I should bring it up.

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Speaker 1: No one knows for sure where it came from, but

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Speaker 1: the idea of the sardonic grin has also been potentially

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Speaker 1: traced to a totally different Sardinian threat. So ancient historians

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Speaker 1: told these stories that on the island of Sardinia, the

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Speaker 1: pre Roman inhabitants had this ritual custom for dealing with

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Speaker 1: criminals and for euthanizing elderly people who couldn't care for themselves.

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Speaker 1: And what they do is they would drug them with

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Speaker 1: an intoxicating poison that caused the victim's facial muscles to

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Speaker 1: contract into a creepy grin and become paralyzed, hence the

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Speaker 1: sardonic grin of Sardinia. And then while the victims were

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Speaker 1: drugged out, they could be thrown off a cliff or

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Speaker 1: beaten to death. It started offstounding reasonably humane for the

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Speaker 1: ancient world, and maybe it still is, depending on how

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Speaker 1: you look at it. There's just not much that's reasonably

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Speaker 1: humane in the ancient world. But anyway, so in two

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Speaker 1: thousand nine, a study by scientists at the University of

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Speaker 1: Eastern Piedmont in Italy claimed to trace this story, if true,

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Speaker 1: to an herb native to Sardinia called the hemlock water

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Speaker 1: drop ward or Enanth crocata, also known commonly as water celery.

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Speaker 1: But this is not a good candidate to stick in

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Speaker 1: your bloody mary, because the stem and the root of

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Speaker 1: this plant are apparently a significant threat to fatal human poisonings.

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Speaker 1: One example, sometime in the late nineties, a Sardinian shepherd

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Speaker 1: committed suicide by eating water drop ward, and his corpse

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Speaker 1: was apparently found grinning. Now, the name en anth means

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Speaker 1: wine flower, and Crocata in particular has apparently a quote

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Speaker 1: paradoxical Swedish and pleasant taste and odor, and this makes

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Speaker 1: it more dangerous than a lot of other plants, especially

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Speaker 1: plants in the same genus, which are also poisonous but

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Speaker 1: have a bitter taste which kind of keeps you from

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Speaker 1: eating too much of it, and because of its ability

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Speaker 1: to cause the facial muscles to contract into the risus sardonicus,

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Speaker 1: and because Sardinia is the only place in the Mediterranean

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Speaker 1: where this plant commonly grows, the researchers think that it

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Speaker 1: is probably the Sardinian death or from the ancient stories,

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Speaker 1: and thus the origin of the idea of the sardonic grin.

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Speaker 1: Now back to Talos though. Okay, so I'm sorry to

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Speaker 1: take a sup It's a fascinating diversion, but the bronze

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Speaker 1: killer oasis is will explore. There are two key origin

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Speaker 1: stories for this mechanical marvel. So in some tales he

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Speaker 1: had been Really most of the older tales he was

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Speaker 1: created by Festus, the god of the forge, the later

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Speaker 1: known as Vulcan, the blacksmith god of Olympus. Yeah, the

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Speaker 1: deformed god who and who. If you visit Birmingham, Alabama,

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Speaker 1: you get to see his likeness on the horizon because

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Speaker 1: they have the statue of Vulcan. I didn't know that. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: it's it's interesting. It's one of the few I guess

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Speaker 1: pagan uh tourist stops in the American South. But in

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Speaker 1: later tellings, Uh the inventor Dadalists constructs this artificial being. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: the master inventor, the creator of the Manoan Mayze, the

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Speaker 1: Wings of Icarus and other marvels, the famed mythical inventor. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: and it's but this is interesting as well because Talos,

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Speaker 1: the the bronze automaton here curiously bears the same name

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Speaker 1: as the inventor the Dadalists tried to murder out of

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Speaker 1: jealousy earlier on, pushing him out of it out of

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Speaker 1: a tower, although Athena saves this more total Talus by

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Speaker 1: turning him into a partridge so we can fly away. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: and his paper Paris talks about the the number of

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Speaker 1: stories along these lines. But it's like an Athenian tradition

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Speaker 1: that Daedalus was in Athens and he had this pupil

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Speaker 1: who was very talented, and he was a little too talented,

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Speaker 1: so Dadalus got a little territorial, got a little jealous,

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Speaker 1: and pushed him off the acropolis. Yeah. That the original Talus,

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Speaker 1: if we want to call him that, the mortal Talus.

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Speaker 1: He's attributed with with inventing the saw really things, So yeah,

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Speaker 1: Deedal is the standing. There's like jeezus saw that's genius.

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Speaker 1: Why didn't I think of that? I just want to

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Speaker 1: push you out of a towel, and he does. This

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Speaker 1: is a great argument for not showing up your boss

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Speaker 1: in a meeting or being too clever. You're gonna get

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Speaker 1: pushed out of a tower. You just know it's coming exactly.

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Speaker 1: No One. Last note about that Talus. That original human

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Speaker 1: Talus was apparently also known as Callous in some traditions,

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Speaker 1: so there's some differences in the name. But anyway, so

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Speaker 1: back to tell Us in the story of the Golden Fleet.

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Speaker 1: So you've got Jason and the Argonauts and Dia especially

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Speaker 1: now in most of the good versions of the story,

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Speaker 1: Media is the one who takes him down right right

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Speaker 1: and it and most of them, and has to do

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Speaker 1: with the removing of a bronze nail from that ankle again,

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Speaker 1: that weak point that's that's connected to the vein that

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Speaker 1: runs all the way through Talus's body. Uh, she unplugs it.

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Speaker 1: She unplugs the bronze nail, which causes uh the echer

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Speaker 1: to pour out of his body, draining him of all

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Speaker 1: life and movement. And there's actually a wonderful vase and

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Speaker 1: Athenian vase from four hundred b C. That illustrates this,

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Speaker 1: and I'll make sure to include that image on the

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Speaker 1: landing page for this episode's Stuff to Blow your Mind

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Speaker 1: dot Com, you should take a look at this because

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Speaker 1: it's awesome. Talus has ripped. His pecks are like the

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Speaker 1: size of cars. But actually, one thing that you might

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Speaker 1: notice in this vase is that, so, okay, you've got

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Speaker 1: a bronze man and he seems to be stumbling and

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Speaker 1: falling down, but he's the same size as all the

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Speaker 1: other dudes are round him, which makes sense when you

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Speaker 1: think about the the the the embrace, the deadly burning

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Speaker 1: bear hug of the giant exactly. So when I read

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Speaker 1: this story in the say the version told by Apollonius

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Speaker 1: of Rhodes, I think of Talus as this hundred foot

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Speaker 1: tall giant, and it seems that most modern commentators have

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Speaker 1: just assumed him to be towering, to be a giant,

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Speaker 1: like in the Ray Harry House in movies, where when

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Speaker 1: you see tal Us he's this huge godzilla like figure.

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Speaker 1: But Paris points out that most of the ancient authors

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Speaker 1: didn't describe him this way, and that logically, like you're

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Speaker 1: saying he couldn't have been that much bigger than a man.

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Speaker 1: How else could he do this, this heating embrace, heating,

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Speaker 1: the scalding, burning, roasting embrace. Now, one exception to this

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Speaker 1: seems to be the author of the Orphic Argonautica, which

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Speaker 1: is a different telling of the Argonautica, who called him

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Speaker 1: quote a bronze thrice giant or tree giganta. The line

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Speaker 1: from there is we suffered a great enemy on crete

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Speaker 1: when we observed a bronze giant who allowed no one

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Speaker 1: to go into the harbor. So at least some ancient

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Speaker 1: authors picked up on this idea that he was a giant,

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Speaker 1: but it's not there in most of the stories, and

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Speaker 1: most he's more like the tin man or something that's

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Speaker 1: very strong, powerful metal figure, but basically human sized. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: and and I believe there's also sometimes some crossover from

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Speaker 1: accounts of the Colossus of Rhodes. Oh yeah, you know,

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Speaker 1: the the literally a giant statue that stood as a

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Speaker 1: sort of a guardian of of the harbor. Yeah, so

424
00:23:34,000 --> 00:23:35,800
Speaker 1: wait a minute, we got to go back to how

425
00:23:36,119 --> 00:23:39,000
Speaker 1: tell Us gets defeated in those stories. So there are

426
00:23:39,000 --> 00:23:41,520
Speaker 1: four different versions of his death that seemed to exist,

427
00:23:41,760 --> 00:23:44,960
Speaker 1: but they all relate to draining the equal out of

428
00:23:45,040 --> 00:23:50,000
Speaker 1: the ankle. So in one uh, the hero poets shoots

429
00:23:50,080 --> 00:23:53,440
Speaker 1: him in the ankle, which is is one I reject.

430
00:23:53,520 --> 00:23:56,960
Speaker 1: That's no fun, don't don't give this guy a chance

431
00:23:57,040 --> 00:23:59,680
Speaker 1: to do it. It's this is a media's role, right.

432
00:24:00,160 --> 00:24:03,480
Speaker 1: So there's another one where Medea's tricks him into thinking

433
00:24:03,600 --> 00:24:06,320
Speaker 1: she can make him immortal by pulling out the nail.

434
00:24:06,520 --> 00:24:09,240
Speaker 1: Now this is a common trick up Medea's sleeve because

435
00:24:09,359 --> 00:24:13,359
Speaker 1: later in the same story, Media also kills the usurper

436
00:24:13,480 --> 00:24:16,240
Speaker 1: king by tricking him into thinking he can be immortal.

437
00:24:16,280 --> 00:24:19,159
Speaker 1: Actually not by tricking him, but she plays this wonderfully

438
00:24:19,160 --> 00:24:22,800
Speaker 1: fatal and devious hoax on the daughters of the pretender

439
00:24:22,880 --> 00:24:25,000
Speaker 1: king that Jason is trying to get his throne back from.

440
00:24:25,480 --> 00:24:28,280
Speaker 1: I believe his name is Pelias, right, So she goes

441
00:24:28,320 --> 00:24:32,080
Speaker 1: to Pelias's daughters and says, hey, look, I can make

442
00:24:32,080 --> 00:24:35,160
Speaker 1: an old lamb young again. Or not not not a lamb,

443
00:24:35,200 --> 00:24:38,479
Speaker 1: I guess an old ram And so she chops it up,

444
00:24:38,480 --> 00:24:40,639
Speaker 1: puts it in boiling water, and does a spell to

445
00:24:40,720 --> 00:24:44,240
Speaker 1: make a young lamb jump out. And then so Pelias's

446
00:24:44,320 --> 00:24:46,760
Speaker 1: daughters are like, well, great, we're gonna do that for

447
00:24:46,880 --> 00:24:49,720
Speaker 1: Dad Happy birthday. And so they chop him up and

448
00:24:49,760 --> 00:24:51,720
Speaker 1: they boil him, and they try to do the spell

449
00:24:51,720 --> 00:24:53,960
Speaker 1: and it doesn't work. She's something of an anti hero,

450
00:24:54,200 --> 00:24:57,080
Speaker 1: isn't she. Yeah? Well, no, I mean Media, you gotta

451
00:24:57,080 --> 00:24:59,560
Speaker 1: feel for her like she's she's the I would say

452
00:24:59,560 --> 00:25:02,840
Speaker 1: she's the maragic heroine despite all of the killing she does. Yeah.

453
00:25:03,520 --> 00:25:07,119
Speaker 1: The other two versions of this relate to magical efforts

454
00:25:07,200 --> 00:25:12,040
Speaker 1: on Media's part, her hypnotic gaze spells, or even some

455
00:25:12,080 --> 00:25:15,200
Speaker 1: sort of a magical potion of a drugging of Talus

456
00:25:15,240 --> 00:25:18,119
Speaker 1: if you will that somehow make him stumble and rupture

457
00:25:18,200 --> 00:25:21,720
Speaker 1: his ankle on a rock, or or at least open

458
00:25:21,840 --> 00:25:24,320
Speaker 1: him up for attack, allow her to move in and

459
00:25:24,359 --> 00:25:27,280
Speaker 1: pull that nail from the membrane. I would say the

460
00:25:27,359 --> 00:25:30,480
Speaker 1: actual text of the Argonautica is too good not to read,

461
00:25:30,560 --> 00:25:32,639
Speaker 1: so I think we should read the section where Media

462
00:25:32,800 --> 00:25:35,680
Speaker 1: kills tell Us in side note, this would be a

463
00:25:35,680 --> 00:25:38,240
Speaker 1: good one to throw some drums over some good and

464
00:25:38,280 --> 00:25:41,000
Speaker 1: the barbarian trumps exactly, so please sub them in here.

465
00:25:41,119 --> 00:25:43,760
Speaker 1: So the Talus shows up on a cliff, he threatens

466
00:25:43,800 --> 00:25:46,520
Speaker 1: to crush them with rocks, and Media tells Jason and

467
00:25:46,560 --> 00:25:48,400
Speaker 1: his men to back away from the shore and let

468
00:25:48,440 --> 00:25:50,439
Speaker 1: her take care of it. And then the translation of

469
00:25:50,440 --> 00:25:54,720
Speaker 1: what follows is by RC. Seaton. And with songs did

470
00:25:54,760 --> 00:25:59,159
Speaker 1: she propitiate and invoke the death spirits, devourers of life,

471
00:25:59,440 --> 00:26:03,360
Speaker 1: the swift hounds of Hades, who, hovering through all the air,

472
00:26:03,680 --> 00:26:07,879
Speaker 1: swooped down on the living, kneeling in supplication. Thrice she

473
00:26:08,040 --> 00:26:11,720
Speaker 1: called on them with songs, and thrice with prayers, and

474
00:26:12,080 --> 00:26:15,600
Speaker 1: shaping her soul to mischief. With her hostile glance, she

475
00:26:15,720 --> 00:26:19,080
Speaker 1: bewitched the eyes of Talus, the man of bronze, and

476
00:26:19,160 --> 00:26:22,640
Speaker 1: her teeth gnashed bitter wrath against him, and she sent

477
00:26:22,720 --> 00:26:27,639
Speaker 1: forth baneful phantoms in the frenzy of her rage. Father Zeus,

478
00:26:27,680 --> 00:26:31,520
Speaker 1: surely great wonder rises in my mind, seeing that dire

479
00:26:31,600 --> 00:26:35,439
Speaker 1: destruction meets us not from disease and wounds alone, but

480
00:26:35,640 --> 00:26:40,840
Speaker 1: low even from afar. Maybe it tortures us so Tallos

481
00:26:41,000 --> 00:26:44,520
Speaker 1: for all his frame of bronze yielded the victory to

482
00:26:44,600 --> 00:26:47,760
Speaker 1: the might of Medea the Sorceress. And as he was

483
00:26:47,840 --> 00:26:50,960
Speaker 1: heaving massy rocks to stay them from reaching the haven,

484
00:26:51,240 --> 00:26:54,320
Speaker 1: he grazed his ankle on a pointed crag, and the

485
00:26:54,440 --> 00:26:58,680
Speaker 1: ecre gushed forth like melted lead, and not long thereafter

486
00:26:58,800 --> 00:27:02,000
Speaker 1: did he stand tower ring on the jutting cliff. But

487
00:27:02,119 --> 00:27:05,440
Speaker 1: even as some huge pine high up on the mountains,

488
00:27:05,600 --> 00:27:09,160
Speaker 1: which woodmen have left half hewn through their sharp axes

489
00:27:09,200 --> 00:27:12,520
Speaker 1: when they returned from the forest. At first it shivers

490
00:27:12,520 --> 00:27:15,640
Speaker 1: in the wind by night, then at last snaps at

491
00:27:15,640 --> 00:27:19,480
Speaker 1: the stump and crashes down. So Tallos for a while

492
00:27:19,600 --> 00:27:23,320
Speaker 1: stood on his tireless feet, swaying to and fro, when

493
00:27:23,320 --> 00:27:28,400
Speaker 1: at last, all strengthless fell with a mighty thud. Oh

494
00:27:28,440 --> 00:27:31,520
Speaker 1: that's beautiful. I love that. That is a robot death scene.

495
00:27:31,600 --> 00:27:33,760
Speaker 1: If ever, I have read one that's better than the

496
00:27:33,800 --> 00:27:36,400
Speaker 1: T one thousand melting. That's better than any of it.

497
00:27:36,760 --> 00:27:38,720
Speaker 1: And I should also note it's better than what we

498
00:27:38,760 --> 00:27:42,040
Speaker 1: see in the nineteen three film Jason and the Argonauts

499
00:27:42,040 --> 00:27:44,760
Speaker 1: with those wonderful Ray Harry hoous In effects, because in

500
00:27:44,840 --> 00:27:49,040
Speaker 1: that one, Jason kills Tallis rather than media sexist red

501
00:27:49,040 --> 00:27:52,240
Speaker 1: con and it's boring too. Jason just runs up to

502
00:27:52,320 --> 00:27:54,520
Speaker 1: his foot and pulls the thing out, and then all

503
00:27:54,560 --> 00:27:56,920
Speaker 1: the fluid gushes out of him and he falls over.

504
00:27:57,200 --> 00:28:00,320
Speaker 1: Why I mean, you gotta give media some spells to

505
00:28:00,400 --> 00:28:02,560
Speaker 1: do I agree, she's in the movie, you might as

506
00:28:02,560 --> 00:28:04,399
Speaker 1: well use her for that purpose. Is she not in

507
00:28:04,440 --> 00:28:06,919
Speaker 1: the movie at that point? I don't remember. I believe

508
00:28:06,960 --> 00:28:10,040
Speaker 1: she shows up after the Talus encounter, and they encounter

509
00:28:10,080 --> 00:28:14,200
Speaker 1: Talus not on crete but on some island of bronze

510
00:28:14,280 --> 00:28:17,280
Speaker 1: or something. Well, that's a bummer. You gotta get the

511
00:28:17,280 --> 00:28:19,840
Speaker 1: Hounds of Hades. You do the Hounds eighties. That's a

512
00:28:19,880 --> 00:28:22,199
Speaker 1: great line. Now. I love the way Media does this

513
00:28:22,280 --> 00:28:25,000
Speaker 1: because she's like, of course, you got Jason and all

514
00:28:25,040 --> 00:28:27,720
Speaker 1: his meathead buddies that I guess they probably just want

515
00:28:27,760 --> 00:28:29,679
Speaker 1: to rush in there and slash him up with swords.

516
00:28:29,680 --> 00:28:32,119
Speaker 1: But Medeia is like, hold on, I got this. And

517
00:28:32,160 --> 00:28:35,720
Speaker 1: that's actually possibly there in her name, because, as Adrian

518
00:28:35,760 --> 00:28:39,160
Speaker 1: Mayor points out, the name Medeia seems to be derived

519
00:28:39,200 --> 00:28:42,360
Speaker 1: from a Greek word that means to plan or to devise.

520
00:28:42,840 --> 00:28:46,000
Speaker 1: Whereas she's surrounded by these heroes who are who are

521
00:28:46,040 --> 00:28:49,960
Speaker 1: powerful because they're strong and brave. She's powerful because she's

522
00:28:50,000 --> 00:28:52,680
Speaker 1: cunning and she can think it out. So she's definitely

523
00:28:52,720 --> 00:28:56,520
Speaker 1: one of the really cool aspects of this story. Yeah,

524
00:28:56,560 --> 00:28:59,920
Speaker 1: the other, of course, being the giant bronze robot. Yes,

525
00:29:00,040 --> 00:29:03,680
Speaker 1: so where does Talus come from in the literary tradition,

526
00:29:03,760 --> 00:29:08,240
Speaker 1: like where where whence this Bronze Sentinel. We're gonna answer

527
00:29:08,240 --> 00:29:12,960
Speaker 1: that question when we come back. All right, we're back.

528
00:29:13,760 --> 00:29:16,200
Speaker 1: So before we proceed here, I want to read this

529
00:29:16,320 --> 00:29:21,240
Speaker 1: excellent quote from Merlin Paris in that Talos in Dentalist

530
00:29:21,520 --> 00:29:25,920
Speaker 1: article that we've been discussing, that really drives home why

531
00:29:25,960 --> 00:29:30,000
Speaker 1: we're doing an episode about this myth. To begin with quote,

532
00:29:30,000 --> 00:29:33,640
Speaker 1: Talus was not a mortal creature like the rest of them,

533
00:29:33,640 --> 00:29:36,800
Speaker 1: but a product of the Bronze founder's art. In other words,

534
00:29:37,040 --> 00:29:40,120
Speaker 1: we have in him a robot, perhaps man's first conception

535
00:29:40,160 --> 00:29:43,280
Speaker 1: of such, not only in the outer form, but replete

536
00:29:43,320 --> 00:29:47,280
Speaker 1: within an imaginary mechanical device which was thought to activate him.

537
00:29:47,320 --> 00:29:50,240
Speaker 1: And in this capacity he does not draw his plausibility,

538
00:29:50,600 --> 00:29:54,080
Speaker 1: as the other monsters did, from the wild and fantastic

539
00:29:54,160 --> 00:29:58,520
Speaker 1: natures that belong to prehistory. Rather, he is remarkably futuristic,

540
00:29:58,800 --> 00:30:02,600
Speaker 1: anticipating the s scientific possibilities of the present age, and

541
00:30:02,680 --> 00:30:06,640
Speaker 1: even then belonging more with the bizarre imaginings of the

542
00:30:06,680 --> 00:30:10,880
Speaker 1: new mythology of science fiction than with the mechanisms created

543
00:30:10,920 --> 00:30:13,840
Speaker 1: and used in real life. I think something that's interesting

544
00:30:13,880 --> 00:30:17,640
Speaker 1: about looking at the fantastical literature of the ancient world

545
00:30:18,000 --> 00:30:20,640
Speaker 1: is that a lot of times we have trouble discerning

546
00:30:20,680 --> 00:30:25,280
Speaker 1: the difference between what was to them sort of magic

547
00:30:25,440 --> 00:30:29,560
Speaker 1: fantasy and what was to them their equivalent of science

548
00:30:29,600 --> 00:30:32,640
Speaker 1: fiction as we would imagine it today, because to us

549
00:30:32,680 --> 00:30:35,760
Speaker 1: it all looks ancient, it's all, you know, because they're

550
00:30:35,760 --> 00:30:39,360
Speaker 1: forward looking. Is still sort of backward to us. But

551
00:30:39,840 --> 00:30:42,360
Speaker 1: I think there's a lot of literature in the ancient

552
00:30:42,400 --> 00:30:46,280
Speaker 1: world that could quite well be characterized as sort of

553
00:30:46,360 --> 00:30:50,640
Speaker 1: like science fiction. I think sometimes when you read, for example,

554
00:30:50,640 --> 00:30:55,040
Speaker 1: the Book of Revelation or other apocalyptic literature we read

555
00:30:55,120 --> 00:30:58,680
Speaker 1: that now is featuring is kind of like, uh, epic

556
00:30:58,720 --> 00:31:01,880
Speaker 1: fantasy or something like that. But I think from the

557
00:31:01,920 --> 00:31:05,040
Speaker 1: time it was created, the attitude toward it would have

558
00:31:05,080 --> 00:31:08,920
Speaker 1: been more like our ideas, like dystopian future sci fi.

559
00:31:10,440 --> 00:31:13,680
Speaker 1: I think that's a strong point. Yes. Now at this

560
00:31:13,720 --> 00:31:15,600
Speaker 1: point where we want to just discuss some of the

561
00:31:16,120 --> 00:31:20,280
Speaker 1: different versions of the tale relating where Talos came from,

562
00:31:20,320 --> 00:31:23,600
Speaker 1: because they're important in breaking down what this tale says

563
00:31:23,600 --> 00:31:26,600
Speaker 1: about technology. So the first one that we've been talking

564
00:31:26,600 --> 00:31:29,160
Speaker 1: about a good bit has been the story told by

565
00:31:29,200 --> 00:31:32,120
Speaker 1: Apollonius of Rhodes and the Argonautica. Right, Yeah, this is

566
00:31:32,120 --> 00:31:34,080
Speaker 1: the idea that he was a survivor of the Age

567
00:31:34,080 --> 00:31:37,160
Speaker 1: of Bronze. And this is something that Merlin Paris viewed

568
00:31:37,200 --> 00:31:41,040
Speaker 1: as a quote dubious tradition. So that the Bronze Age

569
00:31:41,040 --> 00:31:45,320
Speaker 1: we're discussing here, this is not an historical time period.

570
00:31:45,360 --> 00:31:47,880
Speaker 1: This is not the technological Bronze Age that we will

571
00:31:47,920 --> 00:31:50,160
Speaker 1: talk about that later. Yeah, what we're discussing here is

572
00:31:50,200 --> 00:31:53,800
Speaker 1: one of the poet Hesiods five races, a race of

573
00:31:53,880 --> 00:31:58,840
Speaker 1: humans created by Zeus from ash trees, violent clad in bronze,

574
00:31:59,280 --> 00:32:02,720
Speaker 1: destroyed in the flood of de Coulian, who is the

575
00:32:02,720 --> 00:32:05,760
Speaker 1: son of Prometheus and who is now confined to the

576
00:32:05,840 --> 00:32:09,320
Speaker 1: quote dank house of Hades. Hades house. I didn't even

577
00:32:09,320 --> 00:32:11,959
Speaker 1: know it was dank. Yeah, it's dank down there. So

578
00:32:12,320 --> 00:32:15,600
Speaker 1: this would frame Talos as the last Bronze man, given

579
00:32:15,640 --> 00:32:17,960
Speaker 1: by Zeus to Europa to protect her children, and then

580
00:32:17,960 --> 00:32:20,760
Speaker 1: given to Minos to guard Crete. However, there seems little

581
00:32:20,960 --> 00:32:24,320
Speaker 1: to suggest that anyone else viewed the Bronze Men as

582
00:32:24,400 --> 00:32:27,840
Speaker 1: actual men of Bronze, and Paris suspects that this was

583
00:32:27,960 --> 00:32:32,000
Speaker 1: Apollonius's invention. Okay, so we're seeing sort of a mishmash

584
00:32:32,120 --> 00:32:35,320
Speaker 1: of different ideas here. You've got Hessia's bronze age of

585
00:32:35,320 --> 00:32:38,960
Speaker 1: of creatures, these human creatures who are not literally made

586
00:32:39,000 --> 00:32:42,520
Speaker 1: of bronze. But but it seems like Apollonius is sort

587
00:32:42,520 --> 00:32:44,800
Speaker 1: of taking that idea and applying it to a creature

588
00:32:44,920 --> 00:32:48,640
Speaker 1: that he does say explicitly is made of bronze. Again,

589
00:32:48,760 --> 00:32:52,400
Speaker 1: myths evolved, and myths are retold and retold and changed.

590
00:32:52,800 --> 00:32:55,480
Speaker 1: So if he's made of bronze, who made him? Well.

591
00:32:55,520 --> 00:32:57,960
Speaker 1: In the most popular version of the tale, as we've discussed,

592
00:32:57,960 --> 00:33:00,960
Speaker 1: Talos is the create is a creation, a machine of

593
00:33:01,040 --> 00:33:04,200
Speaker 1: some sort, born from the forge, and in the earlier traditions,

594
00:33:04,200 --> 00:33:08,360
Speaker 1: the creator is Hephaestus, a k Vulcan god of the forge.

595
00:33:08,600 --> 00:33:12,600
Speaker 1: In Homer's the Iliad were told that Hephaestus creates golden

596
00:33:12,680 --> 00:33:16,600
Speaker 1: females and wheel driven tripod stools to serve the table

597
00:33:16,640 --> 00:33:19,280
Speaker 1: of the gods, and he's also the one who forged

598
00:33:19,360 --> 00:33:23,240
Speaker 1: the armor or the armors of Achilles. Simonides, among others,

599
00:33:23,240 --> 00:33:26,840
Speaker 1: identified Talus as a creature of Hephaestus. Okay, so created

600
00:33:26,920 --> 00:33:30,080
Speaker 1: by the gods, that sort of takes away to some

601
00:33:30,280 --> 00:33:33,880
Speaker 1: extent for me, the sci fi nature of the creature. Right.

602
00:33:34,320 --> 00:33:37,800
Speaker 1: If it's an animated statue of bronze, but it's created

603
00:33:37,800 --> 00:33:41,800
Speaker 1: by the gods, it seems like it's nature is essentially magical. Right. Yeah. Now,

604
00:33:41,960 --> 00:33:44,880
Speaker 1: Paris reminds us that the association here might have been

605
00:33:44,880 --> 00:33:48,440
Speaker 1: that Tallus was a creation in the art of Hephestus,

606
00:33:48,440 --> 00:33:51,360
Speaker 1: perhaps by another. And I suppose this would be like

607
00:33:51,480 --> 00:33:54,480
Speaker 1: using satanic magic to make a monster, right, who is

608
00:33:54,600 --> 00:33:57,600
Speaker 1: who is the master of the monster. Who's the true

609
00:33:57,600 --> 00:34:01,360
Speaker 1: monster maker? Here? Is the wizard or the devil? Over time, though,

610
00:34:01,360 --> 00:34:04,640
Speaker 1: we see this growth of association with Daedalus, and I

611
00:34:04,680 --> 00:34:06,360
Speaker 1: think this is where we really can get into some

612
00:34:06,400 --> 00:34:10,080
Speaker 1: fun questions about technology. So in time, Daedalus comes to

613
00:34:10,160 --> 00:34:13,840
Speaker 1: serve as a human representative, representative of the skills and

614
00:34:13,920 --> 00:34:17,919
Speaker 1: crafts that have fastest rules. Over so, the mythological inventor. Again,

615
00:34:17,960 --> 00:34:20,439
Speaker 1: he said to have had walking statues of his own.

616
00:34:20,520 --> 00:34:23,600
Speaker 1: He created the Minoan maze and crafted the wings of Icarus.

617
00:34:23,640 --> 00:34:29,120
Speaker 1: He was a master of at least art, if not technology. Yeah,

618
00:34:29,120 --> 00:34:32,360
Speaker 1: and usually in the traditions, both or at least over time,

619
00:34:32,400 --> 00:34:35,239
Speaker 1: Both and Paris makes a lot of this history of

620
00:34:35,280 --> 00:34:38,920
Speaker 1: associations between Dadalus and statuary that he was a great

621
00:34:38,960 --> 00:34:42,279
Speaker 1: innovator in lifelike sculptures. For example, Paris points out the

622
00:34:42,320 --> 00:34:47,799
Speaker 1: Diadorus writes quote in the sculptor's art, he Dadalus so

623
00:34:47,880 --> 00:34:51,680
Speaker 1: far excelled all other men. The statues he made were

624
00:34:51,719 --> 00:34:55,680
Speaker 1: like human beings. They could see, they said, and walk,

625
00:34:56,200 --> 00:34:59,400
Speaker 1: and in a word, preserved so well the composition of

626
00:34:59,440 --> 00:35:03,440
Speaker 1: the whole Boddy, that is handiwork seemed to be a

627
00:35:03,480 --> 00:35:06,719
Speaker 1: living creature. So what have you the Skeptically, it just

628
00:35:06,719 --> 00:35:09,279
Speaker 1: sounds like he's he's an accomplished sculpture and can make

629
00:35:09,360 --> 00:35:12,279
Speaker 1: life life like sculptures. Right. But this does seem to

630
00:35:12,280 --> 00:35:14,759
Speaker 1: be taken literally all over the place, Like there are

631
00:35:14,800 --> 00:35:19,319
Speaker 1: Platonic dialogues where Socrates and it's there in the Youth

632
00:35:19,360 --> 00:35:21,560
Speaker 1: of Row, and it's there in the Menno. I think

633
00:35:21,640 --> 00:35:26,560
Speaker 1: they're Platonic dialogues where Socrates talks about Dadalus's statues literally

634
00:35:26,640 --> 00:35:29,560
Speaker 1: walking away, so he'll use them as a metaphor for something.

635
00:35:29,640 --> 00:35:31,839
Speaker 1: It's like, don't let this thing get away from you,

636
00:35:31,920 --> 00:35:35,560
Speaker 1: like Dadalus's statues walking off from the workshop. But the

637
00:35:35,600 --> 00:35:40,400
Speaker 1: idea of the innovation of lifelike poses and artistic sculpture

638
00:35:40,920 --> 00:35:42,600
Speaker 1: does make me think about how when you look at

639
00:35:42,640 --> 00:35:47,120
Speaker 1: Stone Age figurines. Maybe I just haven't seen enough of them,

640
00:35:47,120 --> 00:35:49,800
Speaker 1: but almost all the ones I can think of seem

641
00:35:49,840 --> 00:35:54,200
Speaker 1: to be posed with arms at their sides, almost like corpses.

642
00:35:54,239 --> 00:35:56,240
Speaker 1: They don't seem to be an action. Even the Lowan

643
00:35:56,320 --> 00:35:59,879
Speaker 1: Minch is like this, all the Venus figurines, the Lowan Minch.

644
00:36:00,320 --> 00:36:04,000
Speaker 1: I'm just racking my brain for Stone Age statues that

645
00:36:04,080 --> 00:36:07,600
Speaker 1: really have much much action or stuff going on, as

646
00:36:07,640 --> 00:36:10,840
Speaker 1: if they're alive. But once you get closer to the

647
00:36:10,880 --> 00:36:13,680
Speaker 1: modern Age, once you get the empires of Egypt and elsewhere,

648
00:36:13,719 --> 00:36:15,560
Speaker 1: I guess later in the Stone Age and into the

649
00:36:15,560 --> 00:36:19,359
Speaker 1: Bronze Age, you start to see more figurines of humans

650
00:36:19,400 --> 00:36:23,600
Speaker 1: animated with action, like the striding figurines of ancient Egypt. Robert,

651
00:36:23,640 --> 00:36:25,960
Speaker 1: I know you've seen these right where their legs are

652
00:36:26,000 --> 00:36:29,400
Speaker 1: clearly like walking there like the walk sign on the street. Yes,

653
00:36:29,640 --> 00:36:33,879
Speaker 1: walking like an Egypt And if you will and uh

654
00:36:34,040 --> 00:36:37,560
Speaker 1: so you add to this. Paris says the Athenian tradition

655
00:36:37,560 --> 00:36:40,240
Speaker 1: about Dadalus that we talked about earlier, which to remind

656
00:36:40,280 --> 00:36:42,200
Speaker 1: you is that he once had a young pupil named

657
00:36:42,200 --> 00:36:45,680
Speaker 1: Talos or Kalos, who was so talented that Dadalust got

658
00:36:45,680 --> 00:36:48,640
Speaker 1: really jealous pushed him off the acropolis to his death.

659
00:36:49,320 --> 00:36:52,160
Speaker 1: And then for this crime, Dadalus was banished to crete.

660
00:36:52,880 --> 00:36:56,120
Speaker 1: And then meanwhile Paris notes that there are these traditions

661
00:36:56,200 --> 00:37:00,200
Speaker 1: suggesting that the ancient Greeks knew of historical talo ay

662
00:37:00,280 --> 00:37:04,520
Speaker 1: the plural of Talus in places like Attica and Sardinia,

663
00:37:04,560 --> 00:37:08,600
Speaker 1: which were not actual robots but braunze statues set up

664
00:37:08,600 --> 00:37:13,400
Speaker 1: on rocky coastlines as figures of apotropaic magic, meaning warding

665
00:37:13,440 --> 00:37:18,440
Speaker 1: off magically gargoyles, driving away evil forces and beings, and

666
00:37:18,480 --> 00:37:21,279
Speaker 1: Paris mentions the idea that there could have been such

667
00:37:21,320 --> 00:37:24,520
Speaker 1: a figure once posed on the acropolis which fell off.

668
00:37:25,280 --> 00:37:28,040
Speaker 1: And so for Paris, it seems like these disparate narrative

669
00:37:28,080 --> 00:37:31,520
Speaker 1: traditions and historical memories sort of get blended together into

670
00:37:31,520 --> 00:37:36,880
Speaker 1: the idea that Dadalus created Talos not just as a

671
00:37:36,920 --> 00:37:42,200
Speaker 1: bronze statue, but as an animated, living, walking bronze robot.

672
00:37:42,520 --> 00:37:44,239
Speaker 1: And I have to say, this is the version of

673
00:37:44,280 --> 00:37:46,680
Speaker 1: the tale I like the most. I like the idea

674
00:37:46,840 --> 00:37:51,040
Speaker 1: that that Dadalus is perhaps using the craft and the

675
00:37:51,120 --> 00:37:57,080
Speaker 1: power of Hephaestus, but he's creating a thing himself. Yeah. Oh,

676
00:37:57,120 --> 00:37:59,360
Speaker 1: it's much better if it's created by humans instead of

677
00:37:59,360 --> 00:38:01,560
Speaker 1: created by the odds, because if it's created by the gods,

678
00:38:01,600 --> 00:38:03,760
Speaker 1: like we said, it's magic. If it's created by humans,

679
00:38:03,880 --> 00:38:06,200
Speaker 1: this is sci fi. Now, of course, if it's sci fi.

680
00:38:06,440 --> 00:38:08,239
Speaker 1: One thing we know from sci fi's you've got to

681
00:38:08,280 --> 00:38:11,920
Speaker 1: give a plausible, pseudo scientific explanation for why things work. Right,

682
00:38:11,960 --> 00:38:14,040
Speaker 1: you can't just invoke magic. You've got to give some

683
00:38:14,120 --> 00:38:18,439
Speaker 1: kind of chemical or material explanation for the technology. Well, yeah,

684
00:38:18,440 --> 00:38:21,440
Speaker 1: and we have this idea that perhaps the inventions of

685
00:38:21,520 --> 00:38:25,520
Speaker 1: Daedalus are powered by quicksilver. And this Paris says. He

686
00:38:25,600 --> 00:38:29,319
Speaker 1: suspects that Sophocles was the one who managed to steer

687
00:38:29,400 --> 00:38:33,000
Speaker 1: the tradition towards Daedalus, and this idea of of quicksilver

688
00:38:33,160 --> 00:38:37,040
Speaker 1: as the really the animating echo. Now you can see

689
00:38:37,040 --> 00:38:38,680
Speaker 1: why that would be the case, because if you've ever

690
00:38:38,719 --> 00:38:42,200
Speaker 1: seen quicksilver, it's got this kind of dancing, dancing, jiggling

691
00:38:42,280 --> 00:38:44,880
Speaker 1: quality that makes it look as if it's quick, as

692
00:38:44,920 --> 00:38:48,520
Speaker 1: if it's alive. And so this provides an interesting chemical

693
00:38:48,640 --> 00:38:53,440
Speaker 1: substitute to the mythological magical concept of ecore, the lifeblood

694
00:38:53,480 --> 00:38:56,080
Speaker 1: of the gods. Alright, on that note, we're going to

695
00:38:56,160 --> 00:38:58,080
Speaker 1: take one more break, and when we come back we

696
00:38:58,120 --> 00:39:04,120
Speaker 1: are going to discuss technology. G and tell us. All right,

697
00:39:04,160 --> 00:39:07,800
Speaker 1: we're back. Now. We've already talked about the Bronze Age

698
00:39:08,200 --> 00:39:11,400
Speaker 1: as defined as one of Hesiod's five ages in the

699
00:39:11,440 --> 00:39:15,280
Speaker 1: mythological Bronze Age, But what about the technological Bronze Age. Yeah,

700
00:39:15,320 --> 00:39:18,480
Speaker 1: this this is where we get into some really interesting

701
00:39:19,160 --> 00:39:23,960
Speaker 1: technological explanations here. So the Bronze Age generally covers the

702
00:39:23,960 --> 00:39:29,080
Speaker 1: period of Greek history from thirty BC to tw BC,

703
00:39:29,960 --> 00:39:32,080
Speaker 1: and we know that they used other medals during this

704
00:39:32,160 --> 00:39:35,680
Speaker 1: time gold, silver, lad tim, electrom and even iron on

705
00:39:35,760 --> 00:39:39,920
Speaker 1: rare occasions. Bronze, however, it was the predominant metal of

706
00:39:40,040 --> 00:39:44,480
Speaker 1: choice for weapons, tools, vessels, and statuettes. Right, So, what

707
00:39:44,600 --> 00:39:48,640
Speaker 1: exactly did it mean for this robot to be composed

708
00:39:48,880 --> 00:39:51,400
Speaker 1: of bronze as opposed to any other thing that he

709
00:39:51,400 --> 00:39:54,160
Speaker 1: could have been composed of in the story. Well, for starters,

710
00:39:54,200 --> 00:39:57,879
Speaker 1: it means that he's composed of bronze, which is an alloy,

711
00:39:57,960 --> 00:40:02,120
Speaker 1: which is n cop and ten tin. Yeah, So for

712
00:40:02,360 --> 00:40:04,839
Speaker 1: thousands of years before the Bronze Age, people had been

713
00:40:04,880 --> 00:40:07,400
Speaker 1: making crafts out of copper. Copper was a metal you

714
00:40:07,400 --> 00:40:10,759
Speaker 1: could find in the rocks, but copper was soft and

715
00:40:10,840 --> 00:40:13,400
Speaker 1: easily deformed. You can't make a sword out of copper

716
00:40:13,440 --> 00:40:15,520
Speaker 1: because you know, you clash against a shield or something

717
00:40:15,600 --> 00:40:18,879
Speaker 1: is just gonna bend or break. So the alloy with

718
00:40:19,000 --> 00:40:22,800
Speaker 1: tin changed all that and left us with bronze, which

719
00:40:23,200 --> 00:40:25,400
Speaker 1: is a metal that changed the world. Yeah. It was

720
00:40:25,440 --> 00:40:28,120
Speaker 1: the hardest and strongest metal at their disposal and could

721
00:40:28,160 --> 00:40:30,719
Speaker 1: they could form complex shapes with it. Plus there were

722
00:40:30,760 --> 00:40:35,080
Speaker 1: no production obstacles for the for preparation because that and

723
00:40:35,160 --> 00:40:37,640
Speaker 1: we're talking to casting and the hammering of bronze. All

724
00:40:37,680 --> 00:40:40,120
Speaker 1: of this was fully mastered at the time. This was

725
00:40:40,440 --> 00:40:43,440
Speaker 1: this was an age of peak bronze technology. Yeah, and

726
00:40:43,440 --> 00:40:45,960
Speaker 1: bronze was important. It was a major innovation in the

727
00:40:46,040 --> 00:40:49,880
Speaker 1: history of technology because it meant we suddenly had access

728
00:40:49,960 --> 00:40:53,880
Speaker 1: to hard objects that could be formed into blades and

729
00:40:53,960 --> 00:40:58,239
Speaker 1: pre cast shapes that wouldn't chip or shatter under impact

730
00:40:58,320 --> 00:41:01,680
Speaker 1: and could hold a sharp edge after heavy use. Iron,

731
00:41:01,719 --> 00:41:04,759
Speaker 1: of course, later would be even stronger, but before people

732
00:41:04,840 --> 00:41:07,040
Speaker 1: figured out the process for drawing iron out of its

733
00:41:07,160 --> 00:41:10,000
Speaker 1: or at scale, bronze was the best human kind had,

734
00:41:10,440 --> 00:41:12,040
Speaker 1: and I've even read I know in the past that

735
00:41:12,120 --> 00:41:14,319
Speaker 1: bronze working may have been one of the first real

736
00:41:14,480 --> 00:41:19,239
Speaker 1: drivers of long distance trade because sources of tin were

737
00:41:19,360 --> 00:41:21,920
Speaker 1: very rare and it often had to be imported to

738
00:41:21,960 --> 00:41:26,120
Speaker 1: the Mediterranean or the Mesopotamian empires from somewhere far away,

739
00:41:26,160 --> 00:41:29,400
Speaker 1: So you might have you might think, did bronze create

740
00:41:29,520 --> 00:41:33,440
Speaker 1: the foundations of globalism? Also, just a side question, I

741
00:41:33,440 --> 00:41:37,040
Speaker 1: wonder why it is that so many technological revolutions seem

742
00:41:37,120 --> 00:41:42,640
Speaker 1: based on the creation of blades and cutting materials. Well, well,

743
00:41:42,640 --> 00:41:45,320
Speaker 1: I think there's there's an answer there that that relates

744
00:41:45,320 --> 00:41:48,759
Speaker 1: to the basic nature of humanity. Well, yeah, obviously one

745
00:41:48,800 --> 00:41:51,200
Speaker 1: of them is the idea of weapons. But I think

746
00:41:51,239 --> 00:41:53,319
Speaker 1: it actually goes deeper than that, because I think it's

747
00:41:53,360 --> 00:41:57,640
Speaker 1: almost as if blades, by being able to cleave naturally

748
00:41:57,680 --> 00:42:02,080
Speaker 1: adhering materials, represent the very essence of technological power in

749
00:42:02,080 --> 00:42:05,799
Speaker 1: the natural world, which is the transformation of things. By

750
00:42:05,840 --> 00:42:09,240
Speaker 1: cutting a thing, you change its nature and you shape

751
00:42:09,239 --> 00:42:11,960
Speaker 1: it to what you want. Now, that could be changing

752
00:42:11,960 --> 00:42:14,200
Speaker 1: the nature of a live person into a dead person,

753
00:42:14,480 --> 00:42:16,520
Speaker 1: but it could also be changing the nature of a

754
00:42:16,560 --> 00:42:19,120
Speaker 1: piece of wood into a building material that you can

755
00:42:19,160 --> 00:42:21,839
Speaker 1: easily work with, or any number of things like that.

756
00:42:22,400 --> 00:42:24,560
Speaker 1: Now some of you might be saying, all right, Robert

757
00:42:24,600 --> 00:42:27,359
Speaker 1: and Joe, you're you're chewing more than you bid off here,

758
00:42:27,680 --> 00:42:29,680
Speaker 1: But I want to add it. In the book The Robot,

759
00:42:29,760 --> 00:42:32,680
Speaker 1: The Life Story of a Technology by Lisa Knox, the

760
00:42:32,719 --> 00:42:36,320
Speaker 1: author points out that despite the imaginative and symbolic nature

761
00:42:36,440 --> 00:42:39,880
Speaker 1: of tales such as this, we shouldn't dismiss connections between

762
00:42:39,920 --> 00:42:42,319
Speaker 1: myths and the history of technology, because we if we

763
00:42:42,400 --> 00:42:47,560
Speaker 1: look closely, we can derive clues about people's attitudes toward technology,

764
00:42:47,600 --> 00:42:50,560
Speaker 1: toward tool making and the use of tools. Joan are

765
00:42:50,680 --> 00:42:54,759
Speaker 1: Martens in Greek Bronzes in the Metropolitan Museum of Art

766
00:42:55,239 --> 00:42:59,080
Speaker 1: writes that Talos illustrates a recurring trope in Greek myth,

767
00:42:59,280 --> 00:43:02,520
Speaker 1: the endowment of works of art with animate being. We

768
00:43:02,600 --> 00:43:06,960
Speaker 1: see it in the bull Dedalus makes for Pacife, as

769
00:43:07,000 --> 00:43:09,960
Speaker 1: well as such a notable myths as Pandora and Pygmalion.

770
00:43:10,600 --> 00:43:14,080
Speaker 1: Quote in the hands of an inspired craftsman, the proper

771
00:43:14,120 --> 00:43:18,080
Speaker 1: combination of imitation and imagination could result in a creation

772
00:43:18,480 --> 00:43:22,359
Speaker 1: of extraordinary potential the Talos Smith reminds us also that

773
00:43:22,440 --> 00:43:26,080
Speaker 1: these creations were always made to serve a purpose, in

774
00:43:26,120 --> 00:43:28,640
Speaker 1: the case of the giant, to guard the island of crete.

775
00:43:28,719 --> 00:43:31,439
Speaker 1: Here again we've got an author assuming it's a giant. Yeah.

776
00:43:31,480 --> 00:43:33,640
Speaker 1: I mean, it's kind of impossible to resist that, but yeah,

777
00:43:33,880 --> 00:43:36,960
Speaker 1: I see exactly what's going on here. Uh. Marten's is

778
00:43:38,160 --> 00:43:42,600
Speaker 1: drawing this connection between the creative power of human beings

779
00:43:42,640 --> 00:43:45,719
Speaker 1: and the idea that you could actually create something animated,

780
00:43:45,800 --> 00:43:49,239
Speaker 1: something that's alive. Uh. And we totally see that the

781
00:43:49,280 --> 00:43:51,640
Speaker 1: blurring of that distinction in what we were talking about

782
00:43:51,640 --> 00:43:56,319
Speaker 1: with Dadalus Daedalus creating lifelike statues and sculptures that at

783
00:43:56,320 --> 00:43:59,480
Speaker 1: some point are seen to be literally alive. Now, one

784
00:43:59,520 --> 00:44:02,400
Speaker 1: of the cool ways to look at the Talos Smith

785
00:44:02,520 --> 00:44:06,200
Speaker 1: is to see it as a metaphor for bronze versus Iron,

786
00:44:06,600 --> 00:44:12,640
Speaker 1: of the Bronze age essentially ending and the Iron Age dawning. Uh.

787
00:44:12,680 --> 00:44:14,879
Speaker 1: So we've already discussed how in some versions of the myth,

788
00:44:14,920 --> 00:44:18,120
Speaker 1: Talos is a gift given to King Minos or another

789
00:44:18,160 --> 00:44:21,440
Speaker 1: person of power, and in this Knox points out that

790
00:44:21,480 --> 00:44:24,600
Speaker 1: it quote reflects the way that bronze objects were reserved

791
00:44:24,640 --> 00:44:27,319
Speaker 1: for the elite classes by the time the Iliad was

792
00:44:27,360 --> 00:44:30,240
Speaker 1: first told. So the idea here's that the things size

793
00:44:30,239 --> 00:44:34,080
Speaker 1: and power may imply the important civil and military applications

794
00:44:34,280 --> 00:44:39,880
Speaker 1: of practical metallurgy. And historians believe that the invaders who

795
00:44:39,920 --> 00:44:44,760
Speaker 1: attacked Greece from the north around twelve b c. Used

796
00:44:44,800 --> 00:44:48,360
Speaker 1: iron weapons. So it's possible that this tale, this is

797
00:44:48,360 --> 00:44:50,480
Speaker 1: a tale of the transition from bronze to iron. It's

798
00:44:50,520 --> 00:44:54,319
Speaker 1: a it's showing that here's this marvelous weapon. The symbolic well,

799
00:44:54,440 --> 00:44:58,960
Speaker 1: this is basically bronze weaponry and bronze technology incarnate and

800
00:44:59,200 --> 00:45:03,040
Speaker 1: it crumbled, it goes up against this new metal that

801
00:45:03,200 --> 00:45:06,600
Speaker 1: is even more potent. Well, all the more reason that

802
00:45:06,680 --> 00:45:09,840
Speaker 1: you should always show talos being destroyed by magic, the

803
00:45:09,920 --> 00:45:13,440
Speaker 1: magic of media and the spells, rather than by just

804
00:45:14,040 --> 00:45:17,680
Speaker 1: somebody shooting an arrow. Really good, because if it's magic

805
00:45:17,719 --> 00:45:20,880
Speaker 1: that implies, you know, this higher advanced level level of technology,

806
00:45:20,920 --> 00:45:23,480
Speaker 1: the iron working of some of their culture is in

807
00:45:23,600 --> 00:45:26,080
Speaker 1: fact magic to you. You you can't figure it out,

808
00:45:26,160 --> 00:45:28,879
Speaker 1: so it is a power beyond your reach. Now there's

809
00:45:29,040 --> 00:45:33,480
Speaker 1: there's one more fascinating technological angle on all of this,

810
00:45:33,600 --> 00:45:36,279
Speaker 1: and it it relates to that vein of Talos that

811
00:45:36,320 --> 00:45:39,440
Speaker 1: we see. So here's a quote once more from Joan

812
00:45:39,760 --> 00:45:43,520
Speaker 1: are Mardens in Greek bronzes. Quote. The myth also relates

813
00:45:43,560 --> 00:45:46,680
Speaker 1: in an interesting way to the production of bronze objects.

814
00:45:47,040 --> 00:45:49,480
Speaker 1: One's attention is drawn to the mention of a single

815
00:45:49,560 --> 00:45:52,680
Speaker 1: vein running through Talos's body and plugged at the ankle,

816
00:45:52,880 --> 00:45:55,440
Speaker 1: a detail that may possibly have been taken from the

817
00:45:55,520 --> 00:45:59,640
Speaker 1: molds for casting by the lost wax technique, the lost

818
00:45:59,680 --> 00:46:02,839
Speaker 1: whack technique. Yes, now tell me about this, Robert, all right, So,

819
00:46:03,120 --> 00:46:05,120
Speaker 1: first of all, I do want to mention that this

820
00:46:05,200 --> 00:46:08,480
Speaker 1: is an interpretation that seems to originate with British classical

821
00:46:08,480 --> 00:46:13,360
Speaker 1: scholar Arthur Bernard Cook, who lived through ninety two. But

822
00:46:13,400 --> 00:46:16,120
Speaker 1: the idea here is that the functionality of Tallow's the

823
00:46:16,120 --> 00:46:19,320
Speaker 1: thing that gives him live, closely resembles the way you

824
00:46:19,320 --> 00:46:22,040
Speaker 1: would make a bronze statue, or at least a statue

825
00:46:22,080 --> 00:46:26,240
Speaker 1: at So here's the basic process of creating a bronze work,

826
00:46:26,360 --> 00:46:29,680
Speaker 1: an inanimate one, mind, not one that walks around. First

827
00:46:29,680 --> 00:46:32,400
Speaker 1: of all, you prepare a core of soil and clay

828
00:46:32,440 --> 00:46:35,880
Speaker 1: to mold into a figure. Then you layer that in wax.

829
00:46:36,400 --> 00:46:39,520
Speaker 1: Then you add a third layer of fine clay baked

830
00:46:39,560 --> 00:46:42,279
Speaker 1: with Courser clay, and this is where you'd sculpt in

831
00:46:42,320 --> 00:46:44,840
Speaker 1: the details. Okay, so you've got like a clay mold

832
00:46:44,920 --> 00:46:46,799
Speaker 1: and then you put wax around the shape of it,

833
00:46:46,880 --> 00:46:49,120
Speaker 1: and then another clay mold on top right, and when

834
00:46:49,120 --> 00:46:50,960
Speaker 1: you sculpt in the details, that's of course affecting the

835
00:46:50,960 --> 00:46:55,839
Speaker 1: wax underneath. The wax has then left exposed at two

836
00:46:55,880 --> 00:46:58,279
Speaker 1: points at the base. Think again to the idea that

837
00:46:58,320 --> 00:47:02,680
Speaker 1: there are two veins running down Tallis's body. So this

838
00:47:02,840 --> 00:47:05,720
Speaker 1: leaves us with a three layer construction core at the center,

839
00:47:06,000 --> 00:47:09,080
Speaker 1: wax representation around it, and a clay mold over the

840
00:47:09,120 --> 00:47:12,480
Speaker 1: wax with metal pins holding everything in alignment. And then

841
00:47:12,520 --> 00:47:15,600
Speaker 1: once the clay dries, you heat it up and the

842
00:47:15,600 --> 00:47:18,960
Speaker 1: wax drains out of those holes, so then you've got

843
00:47:18,960 --> 00:47:22,640
Speaker 1: a gap, right, and then that's where you pour molten bronze.

844
00:47:22,719 --> 00:47:25,280
Speaker 1: You pour that into the void, and then once it cools,

845
00:47:25,360 --> 00:47:28,160
Speaker 1: you remove the clay and the former wax details are

846
00:47:28,239 --> 00:47:30,799
Speaker 1: now in bronze. So then you all you have to

847
00:47:30,800 --> 00:47:33,520
Speaker 1: do is repair casting flaws, smooth and polish the surface.

848
00:47:33,640 --> 00:47:37,520
Speaker 1: Rework the details is needed at additional embellishments as desired

849
00:47:37,560 --> 00:47:41,640
Speaker 1: like silver inlays, etcetera, and you have perhaps a being

850
00:47:41,719 --> 00:47:46,160
Speaker 1: of bronze. So this means that the Tallos figure as

851
00:47:46,200 --> 00:47:49,680
Speaker 1: depicted in myth could be a direct metaphor for how

852
00:47:49,840 --> 00:47:53,600
Speaker 1: bronze figures and figurines are created, because it's got this

853
00:47:53,719 --> 00:47:56,959
Speaker 1: vein for the wax to drain out. Uh yeah, that

854
00:47:56,960 --> 00:47:59,799
Speaker 1: that's really interesting. It is this idea that this this

855
00:48:00,120 --> 00:48:02,799
Speaker 1: ng is is mirroring technology in more than one way,

856
00:48:02,840 --> 00:48:04,640
Speaker 1: and perhaps this is in doing so in a way

857
00:48:04,680 --> 00:48:07,720
Speaker 1: that would have been more obvious I guess to people

858
00:48:07,760 --> 00:48:09,319
Speaker 1: hearing the tale, like it might have been kind of

859
00:48:09,360 --> 00:48:13,200
Speaker 1: a joke one can imagine at the time. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah.

860
00:48:13,239 --> 00:48:16,160
Speaker 1: I mean I think very often the humor of ancient

861
00:48:16,200 --> 00:48:19,360
Speaker 1: myths is lost on us because we don't get the context.

862
00:48:20,040 --> 00:48:22,040
Speaker 1: I mean, you can you can even imagine it being

863
00:48:22,120 --> 00:48:23,840
Speaker 1: kind of like, hey, you know what this robot's achilles

864
00:48:23,840 --> 00:48:26,239
Speaker 1: heal was? What was his achilles heal? We just pulled

865
00:48:26,239 --> 00:48:28,120
Speaker 1: the plug out and then everything drained out and he

866
00:48:28,200 --> 00:48:31,720
Speaker 1: lost his his life force and then Greek laughter ensus.

867
00:48:31,840 --> 00:48:34,759
Speaker 1: It would be almost like if you in you know,

868
00:48:35,040 --> 00:48:37,439
Speaker 1: thousands of years, we're looking back on some modern sci

869
00:48:37,480 --> 00:48:41,960
Speaker 1: fi story where somebody undoes the killer robot by unplugging

870
00:48:41,960 --> 00:48:44,480
Speaker 1: it from the wall. Yes, and they think that, like

871
00:48:44,600 --> 00:48:47,480
Speaker 1: that is a wow. It has this long tail that's

872
00:48:47,520 --> 00:48:50,520
Speaker 1: attached to the building it's in, and like, what a

873
00:48:50,600 --> 00:48:53,400
Speaker 1: strange mythological feature. But in fact it's just a joke

874
00:48:53,480 --> 00:48:55,520
Speaker 1: about how easy it is to kill this thing by

875
00:48:55,560 --> 00:48:57,600
Speaker 1: unplugging it. Yeah, they might think, well, this is a

876
00:48:57,600 --> 00:49:02,479
Speaker 1: metaphor for how shackled to electricity and technology that people

877
00:49:02,520 --> 00:49:05,279
Speaker 1: of the time felt, and that and and you know,

878
00:49:05,320 --> 00:49:08,239
Speaker 1: all of these various uh, you know, complex interpretations when

879
00:49:08,239 --> 00:49:12,080
Speaker 1: it's really just a pluck. Now, speaking of modern times,

880
00:49:13,160 --> 00:49:17,279
Speaker 1: what evenything can we draw from tallos about modern technology? Now?

881
00:49:17,360 --> 00:49:18,680
Speaker 1: One thing to keep in mind and all of this,

882
00:49:18,840 --> 00:49:21,880
Speaker 1: we've talked about how myths change over time, but of

883
00:49:21,880 --> 00:49:24,840
Speaker 1: course society changes as well, and there are changes in

884
00:49:25,320 --> 00:49:29,040
Speaker 1: like the moral and social dimension of how we treat

885
00:49:29,080 --> 00:49:32,879
Speaker 1: our technology. Yeah. Absolutely, I mean there's definitely a sense

886
00:49:32,920 --> 00:49:37,720
Speaker 1: in which technology influences the development of human ideology and culture,

887
00:49:38,040 --> 00:49:40,680
Speaker 1: but it also goes the other way. Our ideas about

888
00:49:40,719 --> 00:49:44,839
Speaker 1: technology come from our values and are the way our

889
00:49:44,880 --> 00:49:48,560
Speaker 1: society is ordered in our beliefs. And one example is

890
00:49:48,600 --> 00:49:52,400
Speaker 1: I wonder if you can draw broad parallels between the

891
00:49:52,440 --> 00:49:57,640
Speaker 1: way technology is envisioned in free societies that value human

892
00:49:57,760 --> 00:50:02,400
Speaker 1: rights versus slave own societies, and so. For example, in

893
00:50:02,440 --> 00:50:06,399
Speaker 1: his book Politics Aristotle were written around three fifty BC,

894
00:50:07,080 --> 00:50:12,839
Speaker 1: Aristotle is writing about the idea of possessions versus instruments,

895
00:50:12,920 --> 00:50:16,600
Speaker 1: and he sort of characterizes slaves, who are human beings,

896
00:50:16,640 --> 00:50:20,480
Speaker 1: as a type of instrument or tool. He says, quote

897
00:50:20,640 --> 00:50:24,759
Speaker 1: for if every instrument could accomplish its own work, obeying

898
00:50:24,880 --> 00:50:28,239
Speaker 1: or anticipating the will of others, like the statues of

899
00:50:28,280 --> 00:50:32,120
Speaker 1: dead LUs or the tripods of Hephaestus, which says the

900
00:50:32,160 --> 00:50:35,520
Speaker 1: poet quote of their own accord entered the assembly of

901
00:50:35,560 --> 00:50:38,760
Speaker 1: the gods, if in like manner at the shuttle would

902
00:50:38,800 --> 00:50:42,279
Speaker 1: weave and the plectrum touched the liar without a hand

903
00:50:42,320 --> 00:50:46,279
Speaker 1: to guide them, chief workmen would not want servants, nor

904
00:50:46,400 --> 00:50:52,880
Speaker 1: masters slaves. So Aristotle believed that that slavery, that that

905
00:50:53,040 --> 00:50:56,520
Speaker 1: slavery and being masters were a state of nature. Some people,

906
00:50:56,560 --> 00:50:58,800
Speaker 1: for him, were born to be masters, and other people

907
00:50:58,800 --> 00:51:01,000
Speaker 1: were born to be slaves, and this was a basic

908
00:51:01,080 --> 00:51:04,160
Speaker 1: feature of the character of each person. Now, obviously this

909
00:51:04,440 --> 00:51:07,040
Speaker 1: goes completely in the face of our modern ideas about

910
00:51:07,040 --> 00:51:10,320
Speaker 1: individual rights and equality and freedoms. This is the worst

911
00:51:10,360 --> 00:51:14,040
Speaker 1: part of Aristotle to read, and yet I wonder if

912
00:51:14,040 --> 00:51:18,040
Speaker 1: it's illuminating about how perfect perhaps a defender of a

913
00:51:18,120 --> 00:51:22,520
Speaker 1: slave owning culture like Aristotle and other Greek elites would

914
00:51:22,520 --> 00:51:26,480
Speaker 1: have had to blur the line between human labor and

915
00:51:26,719 --> 00:51:30,680
Speaker 1: inanimate technology in order to justify their enslavement of other

916
00:51:30,800 --> 00:51:35,480
Speaker 1: humans like but by being pro slavery, they think of

917
00:51:35,640 --> 00:51:39,719
Speaker 1: human labor and inanimate labor, or at least as they'd

918
00:51:39,719 --> 00:51:43,160
Speaker 1: imagine sort of robot labor in their fantasies, to be

919
00:51:43,320 --> 00:51:46,839
Speaker 1: sort of similar things. So we in the modern age

920
00:51:46,840 --> 00:51:49,799
Speaker 1: would make a complete, you know, a very hard line

921
00:51:49,840 --> 00:51:53,160
Speaker 1: distinction between the labor of human being and the workings

922
00:51:53,160 --> 00:51:56,640
Speaker 1: of a mechanical robot. I'm not sure that Aristotle and

923
00:51:56,760 --> 00:51:59,520
Speaker 1: many of the Greeks always would. So if they didn't

924
00:51:59,600 --> 00:52:02,520
Speaker 1: necessary really make that distinction, how did it inform their

925
00:52:02,600 --> 00:52:06,680
Speaker 1: myths and their ideas of automata and and robots and

926
00:52:06,800 --> 00:52:10,800
Speaker 1: artificial beings. But this is interesting too when when you consider,

927
00:52:10,840 --> 00:52:15,040
Speaker 1: if I remember correctly, our word robot even derives from

928
00:52:15,520 --> 00:52:21,640
Speaker 1: an old Slavic word robota, which means a servitude. So

929
00:52:21,880 --> 00:52:25,239
Speaker 1: you could you see this definite connection between even our

930
00:52:25,280 --> 00:52:30,040
Speaker 1: modern conception of a robot with slavey, slavery or servitude. Yeah,

931
00:52:30,080 --> 00:52:32,880
Speaker 1: I think maybe this very firm distinction we make between

932
00:52:33,000 --> 00:52:36,920
Speaker 1: human beings and humanoid robots, thinking of them as very different,

933
00:52:36,960 --> 00:52:42,680
Speaker 1: fundamentally different things might come from our idea of human rights,

934
00:52:42,760 --> 00:52:45,200
Speaker 1: right Like, if you are in a society that just

935
00:52:45,320 --> 00:52:48,440
Speaker 1: does not really have the idea of human rights, you

936
00:52:48,520 --> 00:52:51,320
Speaker 1: may may very well not have such a clear idea

937
00:52:51,400 --> 00:52:55,400
Speaker 1: of the distinction between a human and a robot. Indeed,

938
00:52:55,680 --> 00:52:57,759
Speaker 1: and I think we see this line blurred very much

939
00:52:57,760 --> 00:53:01,759
Speaker 1: in the different traditions of how the talos is represented.

940
00:53:02,080 --> 00:53:04,560
Speaker 1: But what can I wonder what talos can tell us

941
00:53:04,640 --> 00:53:07,840
Speaker 1: about modern technology? Well, for one thing, it connects to

942
00:53:07,960 --> 00:53:11,040
Speaker 1: ideas about the nature of a robot, like what is

943
00:53:11,160 --> 00:53:14,080
Speaker 1: a robot or an android? And could a robot or

944
00:53:14,120 --> 00:53:17,880
Speaker 1: an android ever attain the human kind of status we

945
00:53:18,120 --> 00:53:20,920
Speaker 1: you know, we've just been talking about the distinction between

946
00:53:21,000 --> 00:53:23,680
Speaker 1: humans and robots can but can a robot ascend the

947
00:53:23,760 --> 00:53:26,799
Speaker 1: ladder and becomes something we would think of like a

948
00:53:26,920 --> 00:53:31,719
Speaker 1: human is a self moved but artificial creature capable of feeling. Now,

949
00:53:31,800 --> 00:53:35,640
Speaker 1: Paris says that according to Aristotle, Dadalus statues were able

950
00:53:35,680 --> 00:53:39,400
Speaker 1: to quote carry out tasks which they had been instructed

951
00:53:39,440 --> 00:53:43,560
Speaker 1: to do or had learned beforehand. So Paris says, the

952
00:53:43,640 --> 00:53:48,160
Speaker 1: deadly silence, the impersonal efficiency, the tireless thoroughness with which

953
00:53:48,280 --> 00:53:51,600
Speaker 1: he executed his gory tasks mark him out as a

954
00:53:51,640 --> 00:53:55,960
Speaker 1: machine without a speck of thought or feeling. And on

955
00:53:56,200 --> 00:54:01,200
Speaker 1: Aristotle's idea that a statue, especially a robot, could carry

956
00:54:01,200 --> 00:54:03,759
Speaker 1: out tasks which they had been instructed to do or

957
00:54:03,800 --> 00:54:07,719
Speaker 1: had learned beforehand, this seems to imply that creative or

958
00:54:07,800 --> 00:54:11,240
Speaker 1: novel behaviors are not possible for it that the robot

959
00:54:11,360 --> 00:54:15,560
Speaker 1: does as its programmed, but that it can't achieve a

960
00:54:15,640 --> 00:54:18,920
Speaker 1: will of its own basically. But then at the same time,

961
00:54:19,080 --> 00:54:22,080
Speaker 1: Talos is animated with e coor for the ability to

962
00:54:22,160 --> 00:54:25,840
Speaker 1: be self moved like the gods uh and the stories

963
00:54:25,880 --> 00:54:29,120
Speaker 1: of Talos several times say he was quote alive, and

964
00:54:29,160 --> 00:54:31,960
Speaker 1: that he was quote faded to die, and that when

965
00:54:31,960 --> 00:54:35,319
Speaker 1: he fell he was not only deactivated or destroyed, but

966
00:54:35,480 --> 00:54:38,760
Speaker 1: he died. Yet again, we're seeing the sort of blurring

967
00:54:38,840 --> 00:54:41,360
Speaker 1: of the distinction between a human and a robot. We

968
00:54:41,400 --> 00:54:46,000
Speaker 1: would talk about humans and robots much more differently, I think,

969
00:54:46,000 --> 00:54:49,279
Speaker 1: in modern science fiction than the ancient Greeks did when

970
00:54:49,320 --> 00:54:52,000
Speaker 1: they talked about their their humans and their gods and

971
00:54:52,040 --> 00:54:54,880
Speaker 1: their robots. It seems like the lines are much blurrier

972
00:54:54,960 --> 00:54:57,240
Speaker 1: all throughout, and certainly we see a lot of modern

973
00:54:57,280 --> 00:54:59,719
Speaker 1: science fiction that re blurs those lines. I mean, there's

974
00:54:59,719 --> 00:55:03,760
Speaker 1: a true in this amount of of of narrative fund

975
00:55:03,960 --> 00:55:05,840
Speaker 1: to be had there. Oh yeah, well, I mean earlier

976
00:55:05,880 --> 00:55:08,280
Speaker 1: we brought up the obvious robot of you Ole Brenner

977
00:55:08,320 --> 00:55:10,759
Speaker 1: in Westworld, but in the New West World, I think

978
00:55:10,800 --> 00:55:13,680
Speaker 1: it spends a lot of times trying to reblur these

979
00:55:13,719 --> 00:55:16,400
Speaker 1: lines we were talking about being blurrier in the ancient

980
00:55:16,480 --> 00:55:20,480
Speaker 1: literature but becoming more distinct in the twentieth century. If

981
00:55:20,560 --> 00:55:23,560
Speaker 1: you've if you've got a West World where these characters

982
00:55:23,560 --> 00:55:26,319
Speaker 1: are robots, but you're wondering, like, do they feel is

983
00:55:26,360 --> 00:55:29,959
Speaker 1: their labor more like human labor? Can they be exploited?

984
00:55:30,000 --> 00:55:32,080
Speaker 1: Should they have some kind of rights of their own?

985
00:55:32,440 --> 00:55:36,640
Speaker 1: It's almost like they're like, we're reverting to this this

986
00:55:36,800 --> 00:55:40,319
Speaker 1: miasma of confusion about the nature of beings that can

987
00:55:40,360 --> 00:55:45,200
Speaker 1: move and act. That's a that's a good point. Another

988
00:55:45,200 --> 00:55:47,400
Speaker 1: great show that comes to mind is I believe it's

989
00:55:47,400 --> 00:55:51,719
Speaker 1: a channel for AMC co production. But Humans explores a

990
00:55:51,719 --> 00:55:54,080
Speaker 1: lot of this. They have these humanoid robots that are created,

991
00:55:54,480 --> 00:55:58,239
Speaker 1: uh to serve us, and then they some of them

992
00:55:58,320 --> 00:56:01,799
Speaker 1: become conscious in complication to arise. Yeah, and one thing

993
00:56:01,800 --> 00:56:04,080
Speaker 1: we can definitely see being dealt with in these new

994
00:56:04,239 --> 00:56:06,800
Speaker 1: versions of science fiction that are blurring the lines between

995
00:56:06,880 --> 00:56:10,560
Speaker 1: humankind and robots is that, unlike many of these Greek myths,

996
00:56:10,600 --> 00:56:14,560
Speaker 1: they are much more informed by the idea of human rights. Uh.

997
00:56:14,600 --> 00:56:16,960
Speaker 1: And so what happens if you reblur the lines, but

998
00:56:17,000 --> 00:56:19,720
Speaker 1: suddenly you've got a much higher standard for what humans

999
00:56:19,760 --> 00:56:22,640
Speaker 1: deserve and how they should be treated. All right, Well,

1000
00:56:22,640 --> 00:56:25,080
Speaker 1: I think that pretty much wraps it up for Talos,

1001
00:56:25,120 --> 00:56:27,879
Speaker 1: the Man of Bronze. However, I would be I would

1002
00:56:27,880 --> 00:56:31,200
Speaker 1: be remiss if I did not mention the giant warriors

1003
00:56:31,239 --> 00:56:34,200
Speaker 1: in Miyazaki's Nasaka The Valley of the Wind. Those are

1004
00:56:34,239 --> 00:56:38,080
Speaker 1: some amazing giant robots that play an important role in

1005
00:56:38,080 --> 00:56:39,960
Speaker 1: that film. Yeah, and now I would say, if you

1006
00:56:40,000 --> 00:56:43,880
Speaker 1: haven't seen Ray Harry has housinges Talus from Jason and

1007
00:56:43,920 --> 00:56:46,640
Speaker 1: the Argonauts in nineteen sixty three, I know we were

1008
00:56:46,680 --> 00:56:49,719
Speaker 1: hating on it because they take away media's role in it,

1009
00:56:49,880 --> 00:56:53,600
Speaker 1: but it's still a really cool stop motion animation. Yeah all.

1010
00:56:53,640 --> 00:56:54,920
Speaker 1: I mean it's the same way with all of Ray

1011
00:56:54,920 --> 00:56:57,640
Speaker 1: harry House and stuff. Right, If nothing else, seek out

1012
00:56:57,840 --> 00:57:00,920
Speaker 1: the Hairy Housing sequences and watch them, because Talos does

1013
00:57:00,960 --> 00:57:03,719
Speaker 1: look amazing in this. Yeah, it's like all the Harry

1014
00:57:03,760 --> 00:57:06,799
Speaker 1: House and sin Bad movies. Usually the story is just garbage,

1015
00:57:06,960 --> 00:57:10,759
Speaker 1: but it's got some great monsters in it. Indeed, now

1016
00:57:10,800 --> 00:57:13,600
Speaker 1: I know we have some some listener thoughts on this

1017
00:57:13,680 --> 00:57:16,440
Speaker 1: you'd like to share about Talos, about the nature of

1018
00:57:16,640 --> 00:57:20,080
Speaker 1: robots and machines. I'm sure that anyone out there who

1019
00:57:20,160 --> 00:57:23,200
Speaker 1: was really inspired by the Bicameral Mind episodes, I'm sure

1020
00:57:23,200 --> 00:57:27,880
Speaker 1: you have some bicameral uh thoughts on this particular topic.

1021
00:57:28,080 --> 00:57:31,919
Speaker 1: Because we're talking about statues coming to life, share those

1022
00:57:31,960 --> 00:57:34,200
Speaker 1: with us. We'd love to talk with you about them,

1023
00:57:34,320 --> 00:57:37,040
Speaker 1: either an email or hey over at the discussion module.

1024
00:57:37,400 --> 00:57:41,400
Speaker 1: That's our Facebook group that you can join and interact

1025
00:57:41,400 --> 00:57:43,560
Speaker 1: not only with us, but plenty of other listeners to

1026
00:57:43,560 --> 00:57:45,200
Speaker 1: the show. And of course you can find us at

1027
00:57:45,200 --> 00:57:46,840
Speaker 1: stuff to Buy your Mind dot com. That's the mother

1028
00:57:46,880 --> 00:57:50,200
Speaker 1: ship where you'll find all of our podcast episodes are

1029
00:57:50,280 --> 00:57:52,880
Speaker 1: blog post videos, and links out to all those various

1030
00:57:52,960 --> 00:57:55,439
Speaker 1: social media accounts that we may pay big shout out

1031
00:57:55,480 --> 00:57:59,280
Speaker 1: to Alex Williams and Taria Harrison are excellent audio producers

1032
00:57:59,800 --> 00:58:02,560
Speaker 1: for for making us sound better than we are as always,

1033
00:58:02,600 --> 00:58:04,600
Speaker 1: and of course if you want to reach out to us,

1034
00:58:04,880 --> 00:58:07,720
Speaker 1: you can do so on email at blow the Mind

1035
00:58:07,800 --> 00:58:20,240
Speaker 1: at how stuff works dot com For more on this

1036
00:58:20,440 --> 00:58:22,959
Speaker 1: and thousands of other topics. Does it how stuff works

1037
00:58:22,960 --> 00:58:30,760
Speaker 1: dot com. Love Love,