Speaker 1: Hey, welcome to Stuff to blow your mind. My name
Speaker 1: is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick, and it's Saturday.
Speaker 1: Time for a Vault episode. This one originally aired November nine,
Speaker 1: and it was about the Binny jesseret of Dune. Yeah,
Speaker 1: this was of course a lot of fun to put together.
Speaker 1: Dune fans, especially be if you having to be fans
Speaker 1: of of the books or fans of the new movie
Speaker 1: adaptation which would have come out last year. And so
Speaker 1: now we're all eagerly awaiting done part two. Well, while
Speaker 1: you're waiting, while you're waiting for more details about that
Speaker 1: production to to roll in, or while you're rereading done novels,
Speaker 1: why not fire this episode up and get in touch
Speaker 1: with the bennijest. Put your hand in the box, Yeah,
Speaker 1: put it in there. You've heard of animals chewing awful
Speaker 1: leg to escape a trap. There's an animal kind of trick.
Speaker 1: He men would remain in the trap, endure the pain,
Speaker 1: feigning death that he might kill the trapper and remove
Speaker 1: a threat to his kind. Once men turned their thinking
Speaker 1: over to machines and hopes that this would set them free,
Speaker 1: but that only permitted other men with machines to enslave them.
Speaker 1: The Greats Revolt took away a crutch. It forced human
Speaker 1: minds to develop. Schools were started to train human talents.
Speaker 1: Welcome to stot to Blow Your Mind production of My
Speaker 1: Heart Radio. Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind.
Speaker 1: My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick and Robert.
Speaker 1: I know, ever since that New Dune movie came out,
Speaker 1: you have been just itching to do another Science of
Speaker 1: Done episode like the ones we did a few years back.
Speaker 1: But obviously that happened right in the middle of October
Speaker 1: when we had a bunch of other stuff planned. So
Speaker 1: it seems like today is the day the spillover from
Speaker 1: October is continuing yet again. Uh yeah, and I mean
Speaker 1: in a way it's a spillover from the October from
Speaker 1: before last. It was about the original release date for
Speaker 1: the new Done adaptation. Oh my god, you're right. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So yeah, we, like a lot of people have been
Speaker 1: have been really hungry for this film to come out, um,
Speaker 1: because I knew it would also just in general reignite
Speaker 1: um my fascination with the Done universe. Um, and you know,
Speaker 1: introduced new people to the Done universe. Um. And of
Speaker 1: course to correspond with that, we would need to go
Speaker 1: back in and do some new Doune episodes. Um, because
Speaker 1: like you said, we did a few, or we did
Speaker 1: a couple years ago, um, and now we're dipping back in.
Speaker 1: I think that was my first or second year on
Speaker 1: the show, so it was a long time ago. Now, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: it was quite a while. And and since then we've
Speaker 1: had people fairly frequently right in and say, oh, you
Speaker 1: should do some more of those. We'd like to hear
Speaker 1: more of those. So well, here you go. You asked
Speaker 1: for it, You're gonna get it. I think, uh, I think,
Speaker 1: I think we may be doing a couple of episodes here,
Speaker 1: but I thought we'd start with the ben and ingesti
Speaker 1: it um with a with a particular focus on the
Speaker 1: gom Jabbar awareness test. So this is a pivotal early
Speaker 1: scene in the book, and it's also a memorable sequence
Speaker 1: from all three adaptations. Um that it's it's one of
Speaker 1: those things where it occurs so early in the novel
Speaker 1: that even if you try to read Dune and didn't
Speaker 1: finish it, you probably read this part because it happens
Speaker 1: almost immediately. I read this scene several times before I
Speaker 1: actually made it all the way through the book. I
Speaker 1: don't remember if I mentioned this on the show before,
Speaker 1: but when I first tried to read the book, I
Speaker 1: think one of the big problems as I was reading
Speaker 1: a really bad paperback copy with extremely tiny print and
Speaker 1: small margins. Have you come across this this mass printing. Oh,
Speaker 1: it's like a it's on microfilm and it has a
Speaker 1: little magnifier that comes out of the spine. Yes, it's
Speaker 1: the Orange Catholic Bible version. It's not very fun to read. Uh,
Speaker 1: And so I never actually completed the book until I
Speaker 1: got like a more readable physical copy. Well that makes sense,
Speaker 1: that makes sense. But so I remember this scene quite
Speaker 1: well because I've been through it a number of times. Well, Um,
Speaker 1: before we're going further though, I want to drive home
Speaker 1: a few different points here. So first of all, as
Speaker 1: much as possible, we're focusing on the first book and
Speaker 1: its adaptations, uh, the stuff that most people are going
Speaker 1: to be familiar with. So we're we're gonna try not to,
Speaker 1: for the most part, go too deep and get into
Speaker 1: territory that that casual Dune enthusiasts will not understand. Also,
Speaker 1: along those lines, we have to stress that we are
Speaker 1: not done experts. We are not lower masters, um, as
Speaker 1: much as we we like uh the world here, um,
Speaker 1: I believe. Let's say you've only read the first novel
Speaker 1: correct and I've it's been a while since I've read
Speaker 1: the others. I'm actually diving back in right now. So
Speaker 1: basically what I'm saying is we may get something wrong,
Speaker 1: we may misinterpret something in the books, and if that happens, well,
Speaker 1: you know right in, we're happy to be corrected. Now.
Speaker 1: Another thing I want to stress here is that I
Speaker 1: have not read Brian Herbert and Kevin J. Anderson's prequel
Speaker 1: in sequel books, so I can't speak to any lower
Speaker 1: choices made in those books. Uh. I'd love to hear
Speaker 1: from anyone who has read them as it relates to
Speaker 1: what we're discussing here. Um. And I'm all for folks
Speaker 1: enjoying these books, but again, uh, they're not something I
Speaker 1: have read. I should also point out that I'm gonna
Speaker 1: probably reference the Nine four Dune Encyclopedia a little bit.
Speaker 1: This is one of my most treasured books. I I
Speaker 1: fondly remember reading a very ragged copy of it in
Speaker 1: the library when I was a kid. Um And I'm not.
Speaker 1: I think I could check it out. It wasn't They
Speaker 1: didn't classify it as a reference, so you could check
Speaker 1: this book out. And I spent a lot of time
Speaker 1: reading through through that, and I somehow picked a copy
Speaker 1: up for like twenty bucks several years ago. It goes
Speaker 1: for crazy amounts on eBay. Now. But wait, which library
Speaker 1: was this? What? What library had a copy of the
Speaker 1: Dune Encyclopedia. It was just a small town Tennessee library. Yeah, wow,
Speaker 1: they just had it. And um, you know, I mean,
Speaker 1: Dun's popularity is widespread, so I guess it's not that
Speaker 1: that's strange. But yeah, it was very ragged and um,
Speaker 1: I was very fond of it. And then he had
Speaker 1: had to look up a copy of the years later.
Speaker 1: It's it's long out of print. It's probably never going
Speaker 1: to be in print again. Um. And it's also not
Speaker 1: entirely Cannon um. But I refer to it anyway because
Speaker 1: it's awesome. Uh. It was. It was an approved work
Speaker 1: at the time, with an encouraging intro from Frank Herbert Um,
Speaker 1: but it was written by various other authors. But if
Speaker 1: you get a chance to look through it, um, you know,
Speaker 1: grab grab it. Because it has recipes, it has wonderful
Speaker 1: illustrations that has all of this additional background info. It
Speaker 1: seems this is just me looking in for them as
Speaker 1: part from the outside, but it seems like as a whole.
Speaker 1: With Like with Doune Lore, you basically have like three
Speaker 1: different tiers. They're the original Herbert novels, the Frank Herbert novels.
Speaker 1: There's there's the lore of the Dune encyclopedia, and then
Speaker 1: there's the additional um arm of it that is created
Speaker 1: by by his son Brian Herbert and his novels sequel
Speaker 1: prequel novels. Oh no, So, now that there's a big
Speaker 1: release of Dune by I guess it's by a subsidiary
Speaker 1: of Warner Brothers. Is that right? Are we gonna get
Speaker 1: a situation like Star Wars where now canon is being
Speaker 1: decided by the media corporation that owns the rights to
Speaker 1: the Dune movie. Um? I don't think so, because I
Speaker 1: think it's kind of a h I think there's a
Speaker 1: certain amount of control held by m by Brian Herbert.
Speaker 1: If I'm not okay, if I'm not mistaken, UM, I
Speaker 1: don't so. I don't know exactly how it's how it's
Speaker 1: gonna work out, but I don't think it's quite at
Speaker 1: the like the Disney level where you have like a
Speaker 1: council that decides on on matters I have. I think
Speaker 1: the plan still is that we're going to get a
Speaker 1: Binny jesser At television series, so that's going to be interesting. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but what I want to know is, like, is the
Speaker 1: Done Encyclopedia's recipe for spice melange omelets going to be
Speaker 1: you know, B canon or ccnon or what's the Oh yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: that that the the pre Disney Lucas you know, multi
Speaker 1: tiered classification system. Uh, yeah, that's pre Disney. Sorry, I
Speaker 1: can't keep on. I think Disney came in and simplified
Speaker 1: matters to a certain extent. So I don't think there
Speaker 1: is many classifications. But um so, I don't know who
Speaker 1: knows what will happen with Done if Done can that's
Speaker 1: assuming like DONE has like real staying power is a
Speaker 1: mainstream commodity. I hope it does. I hope that that
Speaker 1: we see at least through Doing Messiah with this this
Speaker 1: current slate of films. Oh, I guess I hadn't said,
Speaker 1: by the way, but I finally did see the new
Speaker 1: movie and it's absolutely marvelous, just amazing, excellently. Yeah, well
Speaker 1: we'll have to to chat more and more about that.
Speaker 1: Um So, so let's go ahead and just talk a
Speaker 1: little bit about the background of the Benigester, like who
Speaker 1: are the Benigesta and how they feature into the world
Speaker 1: of Dune. Um you know, for many of you, this
Speaker 1: is going to be just stuff you already know. Others
Speaker 1: you might be a little foggy on some of the details.
Speaker 1: And I don't know if if you've only watched the film,
Speaker 1: maybe you picked up on most of this, but maybe
Speaker 1: not all of it. So Dune takes place in the
Speaker 1: distant future. Humans have spread out from Old Earth and
Speaker 1: they've inhabited various worlds. While they encounter native organisms on
Speaker 1: these planets, including the mighty sandworms of Iracus, they do
Speaker 1: not encounter other intelligent life forms. So subsequently, there are
Speaker 1: there are no intelligent life forms in the Dune universe
Speaker 1: that are not human or at least human derived. By
Speaker 1: the later works, Old Earth is said to be gone,
Speaker 1: and we just have this vast diaspora of human colonized worlds.
Speaker 1: All right, So there's a big interplanetary empire spans a
Speaker 1: big chunk of the galaxy, but it is not populated
Speaker 1: by all different types of intelligent aliens like say the
Speaker 1: star Wars universes, right, and so that's something that definitely
Speaker 1: makes it stand apart from some of these other, um,
Speaker 1: you know, sci fi franchises. Now, I suppose that's like
Speaker 1: the first big historical point in the Done Universe is
Speaker 1: people left Earth and started colonizing other worlds. But the
Speaker 1: other big one, uh, and this one, you know, sets
Speaker 1: it apart from from from a number of sci fi
Speaker 1: visions as well, is that you have this thing called
Speaker 1: the Butlerian Jihad, in which these spacefaring humans rebelled against
Speaker 1: their alliance on so called thinking machines, on computers and
Speaker 1: conscious AI and and also more subtly, uh, you know,
Speaker 1: it's implied against a machine way of thinking. Yeah, And
Speaker 1: so this gives rise to one of the most unique
Speaker 1: things about the sci fi setting of Dune. It is
Speaker 1: a space faring science fiction saga without computers in it,
Speaker 1: or I mean mostly without computers instead. Uh, Computing tasks
Speaker 1: in the Done Universe are done by humans who specially
Speaker 1: train their brains to do the kinds of things computers
Speaker 1: with norm only have to do. So you have figures
Speaker 1: like the men Tats, you know, sort of human computers,
Speaker 1: or the Guild Navigators who would do what a computer
Speaker 1: would do in most other sci fi. Right. Yeah, so
Speaker 1: they're all obeying these various edicts like thou shalt not
Speaker 1: create a machine and the likeness of a human mind,
Speaker 1: or thou shalt not disfigure the soul. Uh. There's a
Speaker 1: great quote in the appendix to doon Um to the
Speaker 1: novel that says, then came the butlet and Jahad, two
Speaker 1: generations of chaos. The god of machine logic was overthrown
Speaker 1: among the masses, and a new concept raised. Man may
Speaker 1: not be replaced. And I know we've talked about this before,
Speaker 1: but I always thought that there's an interesting touch the
Speaker 1: idea that, uh, that it's not just like the war
Speaker 1: with the machines imagined and say the Terminator films, where
Speaker 1: it's well, the machines wanted to destroy us, so we
Speaker 1: fought back against them. There is more of a suggestion
Speaker 1: of kind of subtle psychological revolt and in more complexity
Speaker 1: to the conflict between humans and thinking machines that a
Speaker 1: lot of the conflict seems to have been rooted in
Speaker 1: human resentment of what the thinking machines represented within human culture. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: And I always liked how that idea seemed to have
Speaker 1: been given room to breathe. You know. Um, it's not like,
Speaker 1: here's here's blow by blow what happened during the Balerian Jahade.
Speaker 1: Here's sort of forced to, uh, to imagine what it
Speaker 1: might have consisted of. Yeah, it happened like ten thousand
Speaker 1: years ago and is now the basis of of major
Speaker 1: religions of the of the Empire in Dune. Now. The
Speaker 1: Butalerian Jahade is said to have lasted from the year
Speaker 1: two hundred b G to the year one oh eight
Speaker 1: b G. And I know some of you are saying, well,
Speaker 1: what what is b G? What does this mean? This
Speaker 1: means before Guild, which leads to the next point. Without
Speaker 1: without thinking machines, humans had to turn largely inward in
Speaker 1: order to manage this interstellar civilization, and without thinking machines
Speaker 1: to augment human cognition, they had to enhance human cognition itself.
Speaker 1: And this, believe brings us to these different classes of
Speaker 1: of humans and human faction. So we have the Spacing Guild.
Speaker 1: We're told it's a mental physical training school aimed at
Speaker 1: developing humans capable of handling space travel, particularly the dangerous
Speaker 1: navigation of hyperspace that was key to interstellar travel. And
Speaker 1: this is actually where you know, if you know anything
Speaker 1: about doing, you've probably heard the phrase the spice must flow.
Speaker 1: You know that it has something to do with a
Speaker 1: brutal contest for a natural resource known as spice, and
Speaker 1: uh the role and so I think a lot of
Speaker 1: people have, you know, critics have compared spice to oil,
Speaker 1: say in the real world, saying that it's this all
Speaker 1: important natural resource that makes basically everything in the economy possible.
Speaker 1: It makes uh, it makes travel possible, it makes delivery
Speaker 1: of goods and services possible, and that is largely the
Speaker 1: case in Dune, but not by being an energy source
Speaker 1: that powers spaceships, but rather the spice is a drug
Speaker 1: that makes the naval gaition of space by human minds possible.
Speaker 1: That's right, Yeah, we're told that it It basically allows
Speaker 1: members of the Space and Guild and navigators in particular,
Speaker 1: to see possible futures, to see just a little bit
Speaker 1: into the future so that they can avoid all the
Speaker 1: various disasters that are can occur during this, uh, this
Speaker 1: sort of space travel. Yeah, so like you, you take
Speaker 1: the spice and then you can kind of hallucinate fractal
Speaker 1: mathematics that allow you to to to see enough into
Speaker 1: the future, or or see possible futures well enough that
Speaker 1: you can navigate the harsh terrain of outer space or
Speaker 1: folded space in particular. I'm not sure exactly what that means,
Speaker 1: but it's how they travel between the stars, right. And then,
Speaker 1: like we mentioned O there, they're also the mintats, the
Speaker 1: humans bread and trained to act in the place of
Speaker 1: computers and thinking machines. Uh, kind of futuristic savants, capable
Speaker 1: of carrying out really advanced computations in their head and
Speaker 1: also I guess just carrying around a lot of information. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you might see them as a kind of advisor or
Speaker 1: CONCEI leary, who has an internal computer within their brain. Right.
Speaker 1: I have to say, I like in the new film
Speaker 1: how they they had a ment AT's sort of rolling
Speaker 1: their eyes back in their head while computing things. This
Speaker 1: is kind of a nice visual touch, totally, I can.
Speaker 1: I think that's one of the challenges of any of
Speaker 1: these adaptations of of Done is that there's a lot
Speaker 1: of written material that you either have to, you know,
Speaker 1: just commit to including a lot of narration and added
Speaker 1: dialogue about what they are and how they operate, or
Speaker 1: you need to find and focus on ways to visually
Speaker 1: represent them. And uh, and I think all the films
Speaker 1: have have succeeded to varying degrees in that, you know,
Speaker 1: like these these characters look like that, they all look
Speaker 1: like this, they all have this hairstyle or lack of hairstyle.
Speaker 1: I mean, this is I think always going to be
Speaker 1: one of the real difficulties in adapting Dune like a lot.
Speaker 1: I mean, Dune is not unique in this regard. A
Speaker 1: lot of great science fiction and fantasy works. The real
Speaker 1: pleasure in them is in the world that this tablish.
Speaker 1: It's like a really richly imagined, an interesting alternate world.
Speaker 1: So a lot of the pleasure of the story comes
Speaker 1: in getting a lot of that rich detail about the world.
Speaker 1: But how do you, yeah, how do you cram that
Speaker 1: into a narrative? How do you put that on screen
Speaker 1: without just like explaining it. You could have a narrator
Speaker 1: just telling the audience a bunch of stuff, but that
Speaker 1: can get really tedious. So how do you do it?
Speaker 1: And I think again, the new movie I think mostly
Speaker 1: navigates this really well. It finds good, succinct ways to
Speaker 1: communicate some of these rich, strange details of the situation. Yeah,
Speaker 1: or it's seen that way to me as well. Though,
Speaker 1: I'd love to hear from anyone out there who just
Speaker 1: went into this cult um, because I've only heard like
Speaker 1: one secondhand account of this where someone's, you know, they
Speaker 1: thought the baron was the emperor sort of a thing like.
Speaker 1: So I'm wondering if that's like a common misconception based
Speaker 1: on not knowing what to expect or um, if that's
Speaker 1: you know, just something that this individual had, Well, I mean,
Speaker 1: that could be a totally fair criticism. If you go
Speaker 1: in unfamiliar the Dune world, I think this problem is
Speaker 1: going to be sort of inevitable. Like the Dune world,
Speaker 1: it's just a lot, there's a lot of detail. It's
Speaker 1: very complicated. If you're going to tell the story in
Speaker 1: the kind of rich way that that makes it come alive,
Speaker 1: a lot of that detail is going to be in there,
Speaker 1: and so it can be easy to miss things than
Speaker 1: all right, Well, let's come back to the Beni Jessa.
Speaker 1: So the Benagessri are related to these other groups, but
Speaker 1: they till they predate both of them. Uh. They so
Speaker 1: they expanded with humanity across the stars and the whole
Speaker 1: time they're kind of working in the shadows, functioning in
Speaker 1: many cases like a shadow government and behind the guise
Speaker 1: of a semi mystical organization. They're a mostly female organization
Speaker 1: who are particularly adept at manipulating religious culture. Uh. They
Speaker 1: have seemed to have abilities related to mind control and hypnosis.
Speaker 1: They have intense physical and mental conditioning that make them
Speaker 1: really potent operative in combatants. So you know, they can
Speaker 1: really hold their own and we see them do that
Speaker 1: in the movie, of course, um at least in what
Speaker 1: we see Jessica Paul's mom to it. She is of
Speaker 1: course a Bennie jess Rate. They also make use of
Speaker 1: spice themselves to sort of enhance these talents, and we're
Speaker 1: also told they're aided by a kind of union collective
Speaker 1: on consciousness. One thing I think is interesting about the
Speaker 1: Bennie Jesser it is they exist within the Dune universe
Speaker 1: kind of at the boundary of of hard science fiction
Speaker 1: and fantasy, because there's a lot that they do that
Speaker 1: seems right on the border of is this magic, right
Speaker 1: like Dune doesn't include overt magic, you know, you don't
Speaker 1: have people who are majores or casting spells or anything.
Speaker 1: But the Bennie jesser It in particular, can do a
Speaker 1: lot of things that it is assumed that there is
Speaker 1: no magic involved, and they are working by just some
Speaker 1: kind of obscure physical mechanism, but you might not understand
Speaker 1: what that mechanism is, right, and they guard their secrets
Speaker 1: to But this also the to their critics saying, oh, well,
Speaker 1: they're a bunch of witches. That's witchcraft what they're doing now.
Speaker 1: One of their big games in the in the books,
Speaker 1: of course, is especially the first book is the selective
Speaker 1: breeding of the Quissot's hot iraq uh not a mirror
Speaker 1: men tab, but a kind of super men tab. They
Speaker 1: want to make essentially a living some supercomputer uh quote,
Speaker 1: one who can be many places at once. And Herbert
Speaker 1: explains uh quote in simpler terms, what they sought was
Speaker 1: a human with mental powers permitting him to understand and
Speaker 1: use higher order dimensions. And this fits into a very
Speaker 1: complicated power seeking plot that they have about essentially trying
Speaker 1: to create a galactic messiah. Right. So um I guess.
Speaker 1: In short, the Benidgesster, I mean, you say all these
Speaker 1: things out loud in a quick summary, it's it's it's
Speaker 1: an awful lot um, you know, in terms of like,
Speaker 1: you know, you're gonna fit this faction into a movie
Speaker 1: along with all these other interesting factions and families and
Speaker 1: so forth, and not to mention the various technologies and organisms, um,
Speaker 1: you know, all all all the more credit to any
Speaker 1: of these adaptations that have pulled that off. Uh. They
Speaker 1: have a lot of tricks up their sleeve, many of
Speaker 1: which might seem like witchcraft of the casual observer. But
Speaker 1: we're gonna come back to that. That that first big
Speaker 1: one that we see, the sort of our int our
Speaker 1: real introduction to the Benegestraate is of course the gom
Speaker 1: Jabbar awareness test. All right, this is the scene we
Speaker 1: were talking about right at the beginning of the novel
Speaker 1: that I've read multiple times. Yeah, I even read up
Speaker 1: to around this part to my son, thinking like I
Speaker 1: picked up soon after many years and maybe it's maybe
Speaker 1: he'd like it. Uh, And we got made about that fire,
Speaker 1: and I was then I was reminded, oh, yeah, this
Speaker 1: is maybe a little this is too dense for him.
Speaker 1: Right now. You know, it will save this one for later.
Speaker 1: But but yeah, it's a great scene and we're not
Speaker 1: gonna We're not gonna spend I guess too much time
Speaker 1: explaining what happens, you know, beat by beat. But but
Speaker 1: here are the basics. Quick note. By the way, Um,
Speaker 1: we're probably gonna end up saying tradees instead of the trades.
Speaker 1: We're probably gonna if we get into the the heark
Speaker 1: and Harconan's we're gonna mix those pronunciations up as well. Um,
Speaker 1: there's of course kind of a back and forth I
Speaker 1: guess about how you're supposed to say these things. The
Speaker 1: main character of Dune is paula tradees. I've always said
Speaker 1: a tradees. We when we didn't add for this movie,
Speaker 1: they were like, no, you really need to say a
Speaker 1: tree eddies, which you said, is apparently how how Frank
Speaker 1: Herbert said it at some point, But I don't know.
Speaker 1: I've always heard of tradees. That's how I've always said it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: Herbert said a treedes, and he said hearken. And but
Speaker 1: you know, I'm of the mind too that ultimately these
Speaker 1: books live in our brains and sometimes there's a pronunciation
Speaker 1: there that doesn't match up with with reality, and it's
Speaker 1: just how it goes, all right. So in this scene
Speaker 1: we have Paula Trayedes, the son of Duke Leto Trades,
Speaker 1: and he's there with Lady Jessica Um Benny jess as
Speaker 1: sister installed in the Tradees household Um as part of
Speaker 1: the breeding program, Jessica was supposed to have a daughter
Speaker 1: who would then go on to birth the Quizatts Hotter atch,
Speaker 1: but then she defied them and had a son instead Um.
Speaker 1: And then that son, of course, is Paul. And Paul
Speaker 1: has dreams and sometimes those dreams come true. So the
Speaker 1: Benejesterate send Reverend Mother Guias Helen Mahaam to test him.
Speaker 1: And Maham is not only a high ranking Benajesterriate, she
Speaker 1: is the Imperial Truthsayer and probably one of the most
Speaker 1: dangerous humans in this entire fictional galaxy. So she's like
Speaker 1: a mega Bennie Jesterrich. She knows all the tricks, all
Speaker 1: the secret skills. You do not want to get on
Speaker 1: her bad side, right, And Charlotte Rampling did a great job,
Speaker 1: by the way, I really hope he performance. Yeah, she's
Speaker 1: really good. So what does she do? She conducts this
Speaker 1: gone Jabbar awareness test on Paul. He's told to place
Speaker 1: his hand into a small, curious green box and then
Speaker 1: she holds this like she has this little needle thing
Speaker 1: called the gone jabar. She holds it to his neck. Uh,
Speaker 1: And here's the situation, she lays it out. If you
Speaker 1: take your hand out of this box, I'm gonna jab
Speaker 1: you in the neck with this pointy thing. Um, the
Speaker 1: gonjabar here is essentially a poison needle that will just
Speaker 1: absolutely kill you dead. It contains uh, meta cyanide I think,
Speaker 1: she says, yes, meta cyanide so you might be prepared
Speaker 1: for sanide, but not meta sanide um. The box so meta.
Speaker 1: The box is far more subtle, though. So you stick
Speaker 1: your hand in this box and it will begin to
Speaker 1: tingle with sensation, you know, like maybe you know, just
Speaker 1: some maybe eventually an itching begins. But eventually, and rather quickly,
Speaker 1: this is going to grow into an all consuming feeling
Speaker 1: of pain. And generally speaking, I think people who stick
Speaker 1: their hand in the box, they just they imagine that
Speaker 1: their hand is just on fire, just crumbling into ashes,
Speaker 1: and there eventually, right it says, I think specifically that
Speaker 1: when when the pain increases in intensity. Paul believes that
Speaker 1: his hand is being charred away and just turned into
Speaker 1: a stump. Yeah. So you know, Paul, Paul has a
Speaker 1: lot of questions and he's maybe a little bold and
Speaker 1: asking them at times. And during this this session, he asked,
Speaker 1: what's in the box and she's like, it's pain pains
Speaker 1: in the box. And he's like okay, and but she
Speaker 1: keeps on going. Um, she says, you've heard of animals
Speaker 1: chewing off a leg to escape a trap. There's an
Speaker 1: animal kind of trick. A human would remain in the trap,
Speaker 1: endure the pain, feigning death that he might kill the
Speaker 1: trapper and remove a threat to his kind. Okay, So
Speaker 1: she's making a distinction here about ways of responding to
Speaker 1: a threat, responding with just sort of with with panic
Speaker 1: or with with strategy. Right, And Mahiam explains that this
Speaker 1: this is a testacy if Paul is a human or
Speaker 1: an animal and why when Paul asked, why are you
Speaker 1: testing for humans? He replies to set you free? And
Speaker 1: and then she goes back to the whole butt Larry
Speaker 1: and Johada a bit and says, quote, once men turned
Speaker 1: their thinking over to machines and hopes that this would
Speaker 1: set them free, but that only permitted other men with
Speaker 1: machines to enslave them. The Great Revolt took away a crutch.
Speaker 1: It forced human minds to develop. Schools were started to
Speaker 1: train human talents, and from here she goes on to
Speaker 1: explain that the the two main schools to emerge from
Speaker 1: this ancient shift where the Guild focusing on mathematics and
Speaker 1: the Benagesserate focusing on politics. Now that word kind of
Speaker 1: rings strange in the context, but I think I think
Speaker 1: it makes sense if you work it out. Yeah, like
Speaker 1: to to reach this point where you're like, oh, they're
Speaker 1: there there, which is their psychic they have. They have
Speaker 1: crazy technology, they they have martial arts, they're super into politics.
Speaker 1: That makes them sound like, oh, oh my good god,
Speaker 1: what topic are they going to insist on talking to
Speaker 1: me about? Um right, um it? Politics? I think can
Speaker 1: sound a bit lame as the superpower of the Benagestrate,
Speaker 1: but yeah, we have to I think we have to
Speaker 1: realize they're talking about politics here in the grander scheming sense,
Speaker 1: and not a shake hands and kiss babies sort of
Speaker 1: thing or a um, you know, the sort of politics
Speaker 1: that one sees on television every day. Yeah, well, I
Speaker 1: mean there are multiple ways in which that could be misleading.
Speaker 1: I mean, one thing I think it's worth noting is
Speaker 1: that when I hear the word politics, I automatically tend
Speaker 1: to assume a kind of basically democratic electoral context, where
Speaker 1: even when the word has negative connotations, those negative connotations
Speaker 1: are against that background. So it might have to do
Speaker 1: with people lying or misrepresenting their priorities, or engaging in
Speaker 1: petty corruption, or putting their private interests above the public interests,
Speaker 1: and so forth, all things that are bad, but on
Speaker 1: a different frequency than the political situation of the Done universe.
Speaker 1: Because the political system of the Dune universe is hard
Speaker 1: to describe succinctly, but I think could best be seen
Speaker 1: as something like techno feudalism or maybe sort of interplanetary
Speaker 1: fascist imperialism with it with a special political difference to
Speaker 1: trade guilds. But whatever it is, it is certainly not
Speaker 1: electoral democracy. It's not a good political situation. So that
Speaker 1: the use of politics in the Binni Jessert sense, I
Speaker 1: think should be understood as expertise in manipulating human institutions
Speaker 1: and seeking power and authority within a ruthless, high hierarchical empire. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I think that sums it up pretty well. So this test,
Speaker 1: this Gone Gibar awareness test, we learn, is ultimately about
Speaker 1: giving the proctor of this test the chance to see
Speaker 1: how the individual reacts to intense stress, and in doing so,
Speaker 1: test them on their use of benegestriate teachings which Paul
Speaker 1: had been instructed in by his mother. Mild spoiler, Paul
Speaker 1: passes the test. He does not die like you know,
Speaker 1: five minutes into the film. Good job, Paul. Now at
Speaker 1: this point I thought we might get into some explanations
Speaker 1: for what's actually going on in this test, were supposed
Speaker 1: to be going on in this test, how we might
Speaker 1: interpret it. Um, you know, I guess in many respects,
Speaker 1: the test is pretty simple. You know, you got a
Speaker 1: needle with a drop of poison on it. You got
Speaker 1: this box, And Mahaim says that the secret of the
Speaker 1: box is something lots of folks would love to have,
Speaker 1: you know, because clearly there there are plenty of bad
Speaker 1: characters in the universe who would like to cause pain. Uh.
Speaker 1: It's said to work via nerve inducers, creating a sensation
Speaker 1: of intense you know, ultimately burning pain without actually causing
Speaker 1: physical damage. Now, I mentioned the Dune Encyclopedia, and I
Speaker 1: just want to point out that, interestingly, interestingly enough, it
Speaker 1: does not really tap and tackle this topic at all.
Speaker 1: It's a book that goes all in on things like
Speaker 1: how the molecular structure of milange might work, or exactly
Speaker 1: how xcon no rooms might function. But they pretty much
Speaker 1: left the Gonjibar awareness test alone, which I was I
Speaker 1: was kind of surprised that. I was like, there must
Speaker 1: be a huge entry to this about this that I
Speaker 1: just never read. That's interesting. But of course there was
Speaker 1: an article about the gom Jabbar that got into some
Speaker 1: interesting stuff in another book we've referenced. This one definitely
Speaker 1: came up in our previous episodes on the Science of Dune.
Speaker 1: And the book is actually called The Science of Dune,
Speaker 1: published in two thousand and eight. It is edited by
Speaker 1: Kevin R. Grazier, and there is a chapter on the
Speaker 1: gom Jabbar called the Black Hole of Pain by an
Speaker 1: author named Carol Hart. This is still very much in print,
Speaker 1: by the way, so if you're interested, you can definitely
Speaker 1: grab a copy. Oh yeah, a lot of the essays
Speaker 1: in this book are pretty interesting. Mostly what they do
Speaker 1: is they take one of the concepts explained in Dune
Speaker 1: and they talk about its situation within the Dune universe,
Speaker 1: but then try to relate it to real world science
Speaker 1: or sort of situate its UH, its role in the
Speaker 1: narrative within the context of real world science. And so
Speaker 1: that this essay by Carol Hart is all about the
Speaker 1: com jibar scene and UH and and how it relates
Speaker 1: to some of the neuroscience of pain. So one of
Speaker 1: the things she says at the beginning of this essay
Speaker 1: is that, of course the hand is quote exquisitely sensitive
Speaker 1: to painful and non painful stimuli. And I think we
Speaker 1: all know this from experience. Generally, you know the hands
Speaker 1: are there's just so much more complexity of tactle feeling
Speaker 1: going on there than there is in many other parts
Speaker 1: of the body. I remember when I was a kid
Speaker 1: and you would have to go to the doctor and
Speaker 1: get a finger pricked um in order to give a
Speaker 1: blood sample. I remember I used to think, why can't
Speaker 1: they just like prick you on the back or on
Speaker 1: the leg or something to get the blood sample, because
Speaker 1: it seems like it's on the fingertip it hurts almost
Speaker 1: more than it would just about anywhere else. I don't know.
Speaker 1: Maybe some places I'm like, you know, the face or
Speaker 1: a few other key points in the body might might
Speaker 1: be as distressing, but the fingertip just it seemed unnecessarily
Speaker 1: cruel to me. Yeah, I know exactly what you're talking about.
Speaker 1: I I try to regularly give blood at local blood drives,
Speaker 1: and um, you know, I I don't want to stare
Speaker 1: at the needle in my arm. Uh that's involved in
Speaker 1: the actual blood draw. But I think if I had
Speaker 1: to choose, like, what is what's my least favorite between
Speaker 1: the needle in my arm and that that prick that
Speaker 1: they do just to test your blood initially, Uh, it's
Speaker 1: always that that prick because it's just it's just like
Speaker 1: this sudden punching and there's this, you know, the sharp
Speaker 1: sense of pain. It's very fleeting. Uh. And it's not
Speaker 1: you know, it's not bad in terms of you know,
Speaker 1: as far as all things go, but it is a
Speaker 1: stark reminder of just how sensitive the fingers are. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And I think there are multiple things going on here
Speaker 1: with this exquisite sensitivity in the hands. I mean, one
Speaker 1: thing is that the hands have to be very sensitive
Speaker 1: in order to be dexterous. But there's also I believe
Speaker 1: a conceptual sensitivity in that you you realize that the
Speaker 1: hands in a way are more fragile than than other
Speaker 1: parts of the body. You know that, uh, that you
Speaker 1: you need them to do all kinds of things. So
Speaker 1: an injury to the finger will will limit the things
Speaker 1: you can do more more so than an equivalent, say
Speaker 1: prick or injury on like the thigh or the or
Speaker 1: the back or something would. Yeah. Now from here in
Speaker 1: Heart's essay, she goes on to talk briefly about the
Speaker 1: ways that pain pathways function within the body, what actually
Speaker 1: happens when a pain sensation is triggered, say by an
Speaker 1: injury to the hand. Uh. And so the first thing
Speaker 1: she says is that most types of injuries to the
Speaker 1: hand will result in triggering more or less identical pain
Speaker 1: sensing receptors in the in the nervous system called no
Speaker 1: susceptors pain sensors uh and the The one exception she
Speaker 1: cites is certain kinds of like deep mechanical pressure or
Speaker 1: crushing pain. But generally, she says, these no susceptors are
Speaker 1: going to detect injuries without much reference to discriminating it's
Speaker 1: it's type. So, for example, while different receptors in in
Speaker 1: the tissues of the hand will be able to tell
Speaker 1: the difference between a range of warm and cool temperatures,
Speaker 1: extremes of heat or cold that would trigger these pain receptors,
Speaker 1: they just register is undifferentiated pain and use the same
Speaker 1: neural pathways. And so I thought that was kind of interesting.
Speaker 1: And she uses that to tie into some of the
Speaker 1: ambiguity of of what's going on with the box, because
Speaker 1: of course Paul cannot see his hand in the box,
Speaker 1: and he doesn't know what's happening to it. He just
Speaker 1: knows something painful is happening, And so she uses this
Speaker 1: to explain that the intense burning sensation he experiences could
Speaker 1: be other things. It could that could include like extreme cold. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I always always like this as kind a model of
Speaker 1: an exploration of just pain in general, because, as we've
Speaker 1: touched on before, there's always a sensation of pain, but
Speaker 1: then there's the mental world of thinking about the pain,
Speaker 1: worrying about the pain, interpreting the pain. And in this,
Speaker 1: you know, Paul's hand is literally in a in a
Speaker 1: green but you know a black box where you can't
Speaker 1: actually see what's going on in there. Well, it's actually both.
Speaker 1: It's green on the outside, but then he says on
Speaker 1: the inside, no light penetrates that. He says, it's like
Speaker 1: a perfectly black interior that you can't see at all. Yeah,
Speaker 1: But to review, like the sensations that the narrative says
Speaker 1: Paul experience as while his hand is in the box, uh,
Speaker 1: it says, first he feels cold, and then he feels
Speaker 1: slick metal, and this is presumably contact with the inside
Speaker 1: of the box. One thing, I don't know if you
Speaker 1: remember this, but it's kind of strange that the dimensions
Speaker 1: of the box are said to be very small. I
Speaker 1: think it's said to be fifteen centimeters to to a side,
Speaker 1: which means that's like six inches. I mean, I mean,
Speaker 1: the it's really small to get the hand in there.
Speaker 1: But anyway, after this, it goes on to Paul saying
Speaker 1: that he feels prickling, as if his hand were asleep,
Speaker 1: and then this prickling turns into an itch, and then
Speaker 1: from an itch it turns into burning, and then the
Speaker 1: burning just increases and increases in intensity until it is excruciating.
Speaker 1: And from here Carol Hart compares this to the sequence
Speaker 1: of sensations when pain is usually felt from an injury
Speaker 1: to the hands, such as burning or cutting. And there
Speaker 1: are actually two different processes that go on here. I
Speaker 1: thought this was kind of interesting. So the first one
Speaker 1: is you get a very fast response that travels on
Speaker 1: what he calls fast pain fibers. These are sometimes called
Speaker 1: type three nerve fibers or a delta fibers and uh.
Speaker 1: And this response is is very quick, so this would
Speaker 1: be like, you know, a tenth of a second. Uh.
Speaker 1: And and it's also usually not experienced as like a
Speaker 1: miserable ongo experience. It is a quick, sharp sensation, usually
Speaker 1: something that prompts you to immediately withdraw your hand from
Speaker 1: the source of the injury. And I think this is
Speaker 1: one of the interesting things about pain when compared to
Speaker 1: other types of sensory input, which is that in some
Speaker 1: cases at least, pain is almost synonymous with the behavioral
Speaker 1: reaction to it. So what I mean by that is, uh,
Speaker 1: you know a lot of other types of sensory input,
Speaker 1: you need to process them and then you know, judge
Speaker 1: your reaction based on the situation. But if you if
Speaker 1: you say, touch a hot stove or something your hand
Speaker 1: is withdrawn before you have even thought about it, and
Speaker 1: it's like after your hand is off it, then you're like,
Speaker 1: oh wow, what just happened? You know, you have to
Speaker 1: process it backwards, which is interesting. I mean, I can't
Speaker 1: really think of much other sensory information that works that way,
Speaker 1: just just prompting absolutely immediate, unthinking response that you can
Speaker 1: only reflect sicked on backwards. Yeah, it is that that
Speaker 1: that that sharp, intense message. I'll say, it's basically saying,
Speaker 1: finger is in contact with something that is burning finger,
Speaker 1: Remove finger from said substance their object, you know, uh,
Speaker 1: immediate reaction. But then Heart goes on to explain that
Speaker 1: there's a secondary type of pain actually that that travels
Speaker 1: via a different neural pathway. So this would be what
Speaker 1: she calls the slow pain fibers. These were also known
Speaker 1: as type four or sea fibers, and this refers to
Speaker 1: the pathway from the nerve endings in the tissue actually
Speaker 1: flowing all the way up the spinal cord and connecting
Speaker 1: to the brain. And these fibers, the slow pain fibers,
Speaker 1: they take longer to get running. They need, she says,
Speaker 1: at least a full second to get the message. To
Speaker 1: the brain and then from here these turn into a
Speaker 1: more building, persistent sensation. That is the pain we're usually
Speaker 1: thinking of as as the the ongoing experience of pain
Speaker 1: when we've been injured. So this might be a kind
Speaker 1: of burning or aching pain that persists. It will usually
Speaker 1: grow gradually worse over time. It often spreads out from
Speaker 1: the original site of the injury, so you might have
Speaker 1: a cut on the hand, but then you know by
Speaker 1: the time it builds over the course of seconds or
Speaker 1: minutes that you know the whole hand is aching. Is
Speaker 1: there's this radiating UH quality to it, and then also
Speaker 1: has something to do with the immune system's inflammation response,
Speaker 1: which is the sort of all purpose first responder to
Speaker 1: cellular trauma and the body inflammation is of course also
Speaker 1: highly associated with pain and sensitivity to further stimuli, causing
Speaker 1: even greater pain. And so this transition from the initial
Speaker 1: fast pain fibers to the slow pain fibers is what
Speaker 1: heart refers to as the double pain response. But there's
Speaker 1: another way in which the information we get via the
Speaker 1: C fiber pathways the slow pain pathways, how they differ
Speaker 1: from other kinds of sensory input and UH and the
Speaker 1: and The point that Heart makes is that, like many
Speaker 1: other kinds of sensory input, they really persist with repeated exposure. So,
Speaker 1: you know, we've talked on the show before about different
Speaker 1: types of neural desensitization to two inputs that, uh, you know,
Speaker 1: if you just repeatedly get the same sense information over
Speaker 1: and over again in an unchanging way, it very often
Speaker 1: fades into the background of consciousness. It somehow becomes invisible. So, uh,
Speaker 1: this can be common with smells in your environment. So
Speaker 1: you know, when you first come around the paper mill,
Speaker 1: you can really smell it, but over the course of
Speaker 1: some amount of time, probably a matter of minutes, you
Speaker 1: just kind of get used to it, and then you
Speaker 1: don't really notice that you smell it anymore. Yeah, Or
Speaker 1: like cooking smells another example of this. You know, you say,
Speaker 1: cook a bunch of onions. You don't really notice how
Speaker 1: this is affected the sense inside the house until you
Speaker 1: step outside for a little bit and come back exactly. Yeah.
Speaker 1: The same is true of sounds in your environment. So
Speaker 1: environmental sounds, you know, the rain coming down outside, or
Speaker 1: the refriger rate or humming. If it's just the same
Speaker 1: static sound input for a long time, you will pretty
Speaker 1: quickly become accustomed to it and not notice it anymore
Speaker 1: unless you, you know, stop to look for it or something.
Speaker 1: And of course the same is true with tactle sensations
Speaker 1: in the body, which would be the most analogous to
Speaker 1: pain sensations. Uh. Pressure, as long as it's not painful,
Speaker 1: will will work in this case. So the pressure, think
Speaker 1: about the pressure of your clothes against your skin, or
Speaker 1: your feet against the floor, or your butt against the chair.
Speaker 1: It all kind of disappears from your consciousness after a
Speaker 1: few moments unless you either stop to think about it
Speaker 1: or it happens to become uncomfortable. So all of these
Speaker 1: sensory stimuli tend to fade away rather quickly, but sea
Speaker 1: fiber pain has a sticky quality and consciousness. It often
Speaker 1: just keeps hurting until something changes, either the painful stimulus
Speaker 1: is removed or the swelling goes down or healing takes place.
Speaker 1: And in fact, not only does it persist, actually does
Speaker 1: exactly the opposite in many cases. So you repeat the
Speaker 1: same sensory input in terms of most sounds or smells
Speaker 1: and so forth, and you will eventually become desensitized to
Speaker 1: them until they disappear. But Heart notes that pain sensations
Speaker 1: are subject to this opposite phenomenon that sometimes known as
Speaker 1: pain wind up or temporal summation, and this is where
Speaker 1: the body becomes increasingly sensitive to unchanging painful stimulus. The
Speaker 1: same painful stimulus is not getting more intense in terms
Speaker 1: of what's happening to your body. It just the same
Speaker 1: thing keeps happening, and it feels more and more painful
Speaker 1: upon repetition. And Heart actually argues that increasing pain from
Speaker 1: repeated nerve stimulation sounds very similar to what is described
Speaker 1: in the scene, except with the interesting feature that the
Speaker 1: pain stops completely in an instant when when the Reverend
Speaker 1: Mother completes the test, she says, okay, Paul is past.
Speaker 1: It's done, and then it says that Paul experienced the
Speaker 1: pain going away as if you know, somebody flipped a switch,
Speaker 1: and pain in the body rarely does this. It rarely
Speaker 1: goes away that fast. Now, part of the whole point
Speaker 1: of this scene in the book is the Reverend Mother's
Speaker 1: claim that essentially you know it's it's all in your head.
Speaker 1: She she mocks the idea of pain, and she says
Speaker 1: to Paul, a human can override any nerve in the body.
Speaker 1: And so she's saying, Oh, you're afraid of pain, that
Speaker 1: just means you're weak. You know that you haven't figured
Speaker 1: out how to how to overcome it like I can.
Speaker 1: And so the question is is it true that you
Speaker 1: know a human can override any nerve in the body?
Speaker 1: The idea that that pain is is all mental. Well,
Speaker 1: I don't think that's entirely true, but the grain of
Speaker 1: truth to it is that the experience of pain is
Speaker 1: subject to more inputs than simply the pure sensory stimulus
Speaker 1: applied to the body, that is, you know, causing the injury,
Speaker 1: causing the pain, in terms of the environmental input you know,
Speaker 1: the knife cutting the skin, or the the you know,
Speaker 1: the stick poking you, or the hot iron against your
Speaker 1: hand or whatever it is. Uh And and some of
Speaker 1: these inputs are cognitive. And so I think it's a
Speaker 1: good way to approach this to reimagine pain not as
Speaker 1: a sensory input in itself, but actually as an experience.
Speaker 1: Uh And So here's the analogy I would use. It's
Speaker 1: much the same way that vision is not an input
Speaker 1: from the eyes but an experience. The environmental input for
Speaker 1: vision would be light, but If you've listened to this
Speaker 1: show for a while, you probably know that actually all
Speaker 1: kinds of other inputs contribute to our experience of vision,
Speaker 1: such that a person can see things with no input
Speaker 1: of light. So think about the the UH studies we've
Speaker 1: talked about with hallucinations that occur in total darkness. A
Speaker 1: person can have can be blindfolded, or can be down
Speaker 1: in a cave or something where there's no light at all,
Speaker 1: and yet they can experience vision, they can see things,
Speaker 1: and sometimes these things they see are not just you know,
Speaker 1: hallucinations unconnected from reality. Sometimes these hallucinatory visions can include
Speaker 1: real information based on other senses. The classic example I
Speaker 1: think we've talked about on the show is, for example,
Speaker 1: UH the body using appropriate reception, so it's natural sense
Speaker 1: that allows it to know where its own limbs are.
Speaker 1: UH to feed into the visual system, allowing you to,
Speaker 1: in the total absence of light, hallucinate the vision of
Speaker 1: your own hands in front of your face. Or then
Speaker 1: on the other end, you can think about the way
Speaker 1: that vision can receive inputs of light UH in an
Speaker 1: at least partially working visual system and have no conscious
Speaker 1: experience of visions. So think about cases such as blind site,
Speaker 1: where a person is blind in terms of their conscious
Speaker 1: experien riens, they do not experience vision, but they can
Speaker 1: still do some things that show that the brain is
Speaker 1: getting visual inputs in some way and reacting based on them.
Speaker 1: The person is just not able to see it with
Speaker 1: the conscious part of their brain. And so I think
Speaker 1: pain is not equivalent to this in every respect, but
Speaker 1: it's close in some ways. So you can think about,
Speaker 1: I don't know, you know, the hot thing on your hand,
Speaker 1: is that's the external stimulus applied to the body. That
Speaker 1: would be the environmental input, kind of like the light
Speaker 1: in vision. But then this input is conducted through pain
Speaker 1: fibers and brought to the brain and is one of
Speaker 1: a number of contributors to the subjective mental experience of pain,
Speaker 1: which itself consists of multiple independent components that can behave
Speaker 1: somewhat independently. So they think about, you know, the different
Speaker 1: parts of pain that you can sometimes even even sense yourself,
Speaker 1: like the the physical sensation of pain versus the emotional
Speaker 1: component of pain, and they usually blend together into a
Speaker 1: unified experience, but there can be you can you have
Speaker 1: sort of moments of clarity where you feel them uh,
Speaker 1: in their own different ways. You get the texture of
Speaker 1: each if you know what I'm talking about, Rob, Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I think so. I mean there's this whole to like
Speaker 1: the emotional context of of pain, like you you slip
Speaker 1: and fall, you you know, you hurt your back in
Speaker 1: in the moment. Yeah, there's certainly they the sensation, but
Speaker 1: then there's all there are these added levels of like, well,
Speaker 1: am I gonna be able to walk after this um?
Speaker 1: Or is this going to be a pain that sticks
Speaker 1: with me? Um? You know, how long is it gonna
Speaker 1: take for me to get get over this? Um? As
Speaker 1: well as even considerations like does this mean my evening
Speaker 1: plans are off? Is this gonna cost me you know
Speaker 1: a lot of money? Are you embarrassed? Are you embarrassed? Yeah?
Speaker 1: So there's there's so many things going on with with you,
Speaker 1: even you know, I mean, I guess I fall unto
Speaker 1: your back and be quite dramatic, but even just simple
Speaker 1: things like um, you know, paper cut, you can you
Speaker 1: can have some of these thoughts like oh my goodness,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna have to put where a band aid? Now
Speaker 1: if I have a band aid on, that's gonna affect
Speaker 1: my typing? How's that going to impact my job performance today. Right. So,
Speaker 1: addressing this question of like, what are the other measurable
Speaker 1: inputs on the subjective total experience of pain in the
Speaker 1: brain heart offers a really interesting example that's been backed
Speaker 1: up by some studies. And uh the example she gives
Speaker 1: is your belief in the significance of the injury that
Speaker 1: is causing the pain. Uh So, she cites behavioral studies
Speaker 1: showing that if you you take people and you subject
Speaker 1: them to the exact same sensory input. The example she
Speaker 1: gives is a hand immersed in water that is too
Speaker 1: hot to be comfortable, so not not hot enough to
Speaker 1: actually like burn your skin at least for the time
Speaker 1: of exposure used in the experiment, but more hot than feels. Okay,
Speaker 1: you take people in their hand in that hot temperature
Speaker 1: of water, and apparently people report less emotional experience of
Speaker 1: pain if the only variable you alter is informing them
Speaker 1: that they will not be injured by the hot water.
Speaker 1: So if you say this will sting, but it's not
Speaker 1: going to burn your skin, it's not going to injure
Speaker 1: your hand, Apparently in that condition, people report less emotional
Speaker 1: experience of pain. So, according to this example, you can
Speaker 1: use verbal cues, You can use information that you recognize
Speaker 1: cognitively to regulate your own pain response. And so, if
Speaker 1: you have more reason to worry that you may be
Speaker 1: injured by this thing that feels uncomfortable, then it actually
Speaker 1: hurts more. If you're assured that you won't be injured,
Speaker 1: it hurts less. And then on top of this, heart
Speaker 1: identifies a couple of other inputs on the subjective experience
Speaker 1: of pain. One I thought was interesting was the idea
Speaker 1: of the locus of control. Um So. The locus of
Speaker 1: control is a term used in psychology to explain whether
Speaker 1: or not you feel like you are the agent in
Speaker 1: control of a situation. Do you have the ability to
Speaker 1: decide whether this pain stops or not? Uh so? One
Speaker 1: one good example would be, uh say, voluntarily grabbing a
Speaker 1: hot dish out of the oven with only a thin
Speaker 1: towel to protect your hand. That might be briefly painful,
Speaker 1: but then you, you know, put it down. I'm not
Speaker 1: recommending people do that, by the way, but but you
Speaker 1: know so that that would be a thing that you
Speaker 1: decided to do and you control when it stops, versus
Speaker 1: having somebody say, press your hand against your will. Against
Speaker 1: something that's equivalently hot. Heart argues that the impression of
Speaker 1: helplessness would actually increase the experience of pain in the
Speaker 1: second scenario. And it is kind of interesting to apply
Speaker 1: that to Paul's situation because on one hand, he can
Speaker 1: stop the pain the second he pulls his own hand out,
Speaker 1: but he's being held you know, hostage essentially here. You know,
Speaker 1: it's like there's a there's an inherent threat that you
Speaker 1: will die if you if you pull that hand out. So, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's interesting. Right, he's not being physically prevented from removing
Speaker 1: his hand, but he, I mean, he does have the
Speaker 1: not edge. He has cognitive awareness that he that the
Speaker 1: consequences will be dire if he does remove his hands,
Speaker 1: so he has to internally self regulate. Uh, yeah, that's
Speaker 1: a weird I don't know where you would put the
Speaker 1: locus of control in that situation. Yeah, I guess that's
Speaker 1: that's very much a ben Adjestent trick, right, obscuring the
Speaker 1: locusts of control. That's kind of a thing. Yeah, Right,
Speaker 1: is it with him or is it with her? It's
Speaker 1: kind of hard to say. There and then another input
Speaker 1: that hard identifies his attention, so she says, if if
Speaker 1: something urgently demands your attention, the brain is usually going
Speaker 1: to find a way to at least partially ignore pain
Speaker 1: until the important business is taken care of. Again, I
Speaker 1: think we all know this from experience, that you can
Speaker 1: be really injured, but you're right in the middle of
Speaker 1: something incredibly important, and then it's once that task is
Speaker 1: done that's suddenly how you realize how much it hurts. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And you see plenty of examples of this, like in
Speaker 1: the sports world where somebody suffers an injury, but then
Speaker 1: they keep going, they press on on um and they
Speaker 1: can in in that moment, but in some cases they
Speaker 1: end up doing more damage. Uh, and then they feel
Speaker 1: the effects later, right, And that might not even be
Speaker 1: deliberate like that. Yeah, you might not even be aware
Speaker 1: that you're actually hurt until yeah. Yeah. Yeah. One more
Speaker 1: example that heart site says, a piece of evidence for
Speaker 1: how pain to a large extent is something that happens
Speaker 1: within the brain as opposed to something that happens actually
Speaker 1: at the side of injury is the idea of phantom
Speaker 1: limb pain. So of course this is you know, this
Speaker 1: would be pain that is felt in a missing limb
Speaker 1: after that limb has been lost or amputated. And the
Speaker 1: interesting thing here is that this is pain not only
Speaker 1: in the absence of actual ongoing tissue injury, but pain
Speaker 1: in the absence of actual tissue Heart rights quote. These
Speaker 1: pains were originally thought to be the result of trauma
Speaker 1: to the severed nerves of the stump, but attempts to
Speaker 1: treat by a second nerve sparing amputation frequently made them worse.
Speaker 1: The more extremes injury of severing the sensory nerves at
Speaker 1: the spinal cord also proved to be ineffective in most cases.
Speaker 1: So Heart argues that whatever the source of pain in
Speaker 1: the body, the experience of pain, the subjective experience, largely
Speaker 1: happens in the brain. And this is why I think
Speaker 1: in some cases it's it's plausible to imagine how the
Speaker 1: experience of pain could be regulated up or down by
Speaker 1: various types of you know, other mental stimulation, apart from
Speaker 1: just stuff happening to your hand inside the box. Now,
Speaker 1: another big thing she gets into in the in this
Speaker 1: essay is what could actually be happening in the box, Like,
Speaker 1: you know, if the if the box is in a
Speaker 1: sense causing the pain, what are some plausible technologies, and
Speaker 1: I don't think she really lands on anything very solid here.
Speaker 1: I mean, and admittedly she talks about how like, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, we we we don't really know what could
Speaker 1: cause this kind of pain without any actual injury to tissues.
Speaker 1: She talks about some rumors of Pentagon interest in different
Speaker 1: types of technology is known as active denial systems. These
Speaker 1: would be things that supposedly a you know, a police
Speaker 1: force or military would use to disperse crowds by inflicting
Speaker 1: pain without tissue damage on them through supposed mechanisms like
Speaker 1: you know, beams of microwaves or femtosecond lasers. But I
Speaker 1: think she rightly points out that in reality these things
Speaker 1: would be not only painful, but if you were repeatedly
Speaker 1: subjected to them, they probably would actually cause injury. They
Speaker 1: would cause burns, right and I and since this, uh,
Speaker 1: this has been published, I mean, I think we've seen
Speaker 1: more and more evidence for that based on uh, some
Speaker 1: of the possible uses of this technology in the world.
Speaker 1: It's weird remembering some of the uh, the press these
Speaker 1: things were getting back in the day. You know, it
Speaker 1: was like, oh, it's so nice that it doesn't cause injury,
Speaker 1: but somebody is even if that were true, what they're
Speaker 1: saying is I created a pain gun. Yeah yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: Like that's a pain gun that leaves no mark, Like
Speaker 1: that's your your best possible scenario based on some of those, uh,
Speaker 1: those those early articles and whatnot. But one idea that
Speaker 1: Heart gets into towards the end of her essay, which
Speaker 1: I thought was very interesting, is the suggestion that ultimately
Speaker 1: the pain caused by the the gom Jabar test is
Speaker 1: not actually from the box, Like what if the box
Speaker 1: doesn't do anything, but the pain is from the Reverend
Speaker 1: Mother herself. And I think the book actually gives us
Speaker 1: reason to suspect this, Like when Paul re encounters the
Speaker 1: Reverend Mother again later in the book, he's like, I'm
Speaker 1: not going to fall for your tricks this time, suggesting
Speaker 1: that Paul believes that it was actually her causing the
Speaker 1: pain in his hand and not and not the technology
Speaker 1: whatever that was inside the box. And here the idea
Speaker 1: would be that, you know, along the lines of the
Speaker 1: other stuff we learned about the Benny Jesser, it's that
Speaker 1: they have these special powers of hypnosis. They specialize again
Speaker 1: in politics, which ultimately is you know, the science of
Speaker 1: man copulating people and influencing them. Yeah, I mean, uh,
Speaker 1: to a certain extent, you can. So you can look
Speaker 1: around in the world around you, and it's like politics
Speaker 1: is often about manipulating your perception of pain points. Uh.
Speaker 1: So it makes sense that they're they're good at this. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: even even in the mundane sense. But but so ultimately
Speaker 1: I thought this was kind of interesting because there is
Speaker 1: some real research linking. So, you know, one of the
Speaker 1: things that says that the Bennie Jesser It's due in
Speaker 1: this regard is they have hypnosis techniques. Uh. And so
Speaker 1: there is actually some research in the real world showing
Speaker 1: that hypnosis, at least for people who are susceptible to hypnosis,
Speaker 1: and not everybody is, but for people who are susceptible,
Speaker 1: hypnosis can in many cases be shown to be effective
Speaker 1: at at pain relief in in both chronic and acute conditions.
Speaker 1: If you want to read more about this, there was
Speaker 1: there was a press release summarizing a bunch of existing
Speaker 1: research from the year two thousand four put out by
Speaker 1: the Americans Ecological Association called Hypnosis for the Relief and
Speaker 1: Control of Pain. Uh. Now, I think there would be
Speaker 1: I think the effects we're talking about here, Uh, would
Speaker 1: be much more modest than what is imagined in this
Speaker 1: science fiction scenario, like, you know, making somebody think that
Speaker 1: their hand is literally on fire, burning down to a
Speaker 1: piece of ash. Um. I think this would be more
Speaker 1: along the lines of four people who are susceptible to hypnosis.
Speaker 1: It might have some mitigating effect on sensations of pain,
Speaker 1: but not like a totally mitigating effect. And of course,
Speaker 1: the evil corollary of that would be that if you
Speaker 1: can deaden people's sensitivity to pain through hypnosis, you could
Speaker 1: probably increase it as well, though that would be much
Speaker 1: less ethical to study, at least in context beyond you know,
Speaker 1: the relatively mild forms of pain people experience, would say,
Speaker 1: a hand pludged into a bucket of ice water. I
Speaker 1: have to say that. Um. I think another a bit
Speaker 1: of evidence that kind of supports the idea that the
Speaker 1: box is not generating the pain is that the box
Speaker 1: doesn't have a proper name. And and Herbert was not
Speaker 1: shy about giving, uh, you know, throwing out names and
Speaker 1: terminology in in the book. I mean, there's a whole
Speaker 1: dictionary in the back of the novel, uh, you know,
Speaker 1: letting you know, what these various things are. Uh, the
Speaker 1: needle at at Paul's neck has a name, but the
Speaker 1: box is just referred to informally as the as a box. Right,
Speaker 1: that's a good point. I In fact, I'm I totally agree.
Speaker 1: If the box were the worthy, efficacious agent here, the
Speaker 1: box would have its own name. I feel like I
Speaker 1: know Herbert's brain well enough to know that. All right, Well,
Speaker 1: at this point, we realize it's time for us to
Speaker 1: take our hands out of the box. Uh, We're we're
Speaker 1: out of time for this episode of Stuff to Blow
Speaker 1: your mind, But we're gonna be back in the next
Speaker 1: episode with a continuation of this discussion. We're gonna keep
Speaker 1: talking about the benegestrates um and we're gonna talk about
Speaker 1: getting into back into that idea of politics and what
Speaker 1: that means, and I who knows, we may discuss some
Speaker 1: other topics in the Dune universe is as well. That
Speaker 1: cold open reading, by the way, is of course from
Speaker 1: Frank Herbert's Dune and Annie Reese, co host of Stuff
Speaker 1: Mom Never Told You and Savor, was nice enough to
Speaker 1: record that for us, So thanks Annie. In the meantime,
Speaker 1: if you'd like to check out other episodes, of Stuff
Speaker 1: to Blow Your Mind. You can find them in the
Speaker 1: Stuff to Blow your Mind podcast feed which is found
Speaker 1: anywhere you get your podcast. Core episodes on Tuesdays and Thursdays,
Speaker 1: listener Mail on Monday, Artifact on Wednesday, and on Friday's
Speaker 1: We Do Weird How Cinema. That's our time to just
Speaker 1: set aside most of the serious matters and just discuss
Speaker 1: a strange film. Huge thanks as always to our excellent
Speaker 1: audio producer Seth Nicholas Johnson. If you would like to
Speaker 1: get in touch with us with feedback on this episode
Speaker 1: or any other, to suggest a topic for the future,
Speaker 1: just to say hello, you can email us at contact
Speaker 1: at stuff to Blow your Mind dot com. Stuff to
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