WEBVTT - From the Vault: John C. Lilly 0:00:05.760 --> 0:00:07.280 Hey, you welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind. My 0:00:07.360 --> 0:00:10.600 name is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick, and it's Saturday, 0:00:10.640 --> 0:00:12.680 so we're going on into the vault. And what do 0:00:12.720 --> 0:00:14.440 I see in the vault this time but a bunch 0:00:14.520 --> 0:00:19.760 of dolphins. That's right, we're going back to February. This 0:00:19.800 --> 0:00:23.720 was an episode that I did with Christian on John C. Lily. 0:00:24.040 --> 0:00:27.840 John C. Lily the Psychonaute. Yes, yes, the man has 0:00:27.880 --> 0:00:33.720 a very fascinating history, from counter espionage researcher for the government, 0:00:33.760 --> 0:00:38.120 to uh, you know, Maverick and even renegade dolphin researcher 0:00:38.200 --> 0:00:43.479 to to counterculture icon. Just a fascinating figure to look at, 0:00:43.600 --> 0:00:46.479 and that's what this episode does. Well, put on your 0:00:46.560 --> 0:00:50.600 Davy Crockett hat and get ready to listen to John C. Lily. 0:00:54.640 --> 0:00:57.440 Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind from how Stuff 0:00:57.440 --> 0:01:05.200 Works dot Com. Hey, you're welcome to Stuff to Blow 0:01:05.240 --> 0:01:07.160 your Mind. My name is Robert Lamb and I am 0:01:07.240 --> 0:01:09.680 Christian Sager, and we're going to be talking about a 0:01:09.680 --> 0:01:14.440 great combination of things today isolation, tanks, dolphins, and psychedelics. Yeah, 0:01:14.440 --> 0:01:16.920 the creature from the Black Lagoon will actually show up 0:01:17.640 --> 0:01:23.479 Cold War era anti espionage, weird science. It's it's quite 0:01:23.480 --> 0:01:25.880 a package. You couldn't make this up. Like if you 0:01:26.400 --> 0:01:29.760 wrote a fictional account of a guy like John C. Lily, 0:01:29.920 --> 0:01:33.000 it would seem absurd, but this is a life he led. 0:01:33.280 --> 0:01:36.280 Yeah indeed. I mean even the fictionalized accounts of the man, 0:01:36.480 --> 0:01:40.320 I feel that they don't quite capture the weirdness and 0:01:40.400 --> 0:01:46.440 strangeness and just mind expanding awesomeness of his actual story. 0:01:46.640 --> 0:01:49.240 They don't know. So, but before we roll right in, 0:01:49.280 --> 0:01:51.280 because I think we should really just dive into the 0:01:51.320 --> 0:01:54.760 deep end. No pun attended with John C. Lily. Uh 0:01:55.080 --> 0:01:57.080 do we just want to remind our audience that, uh, 0:01:57.440 --> 0:01:59.520 you know, we don't just do the podcast Stuff to 0:01:59.520 --> 0:02:03.120 Blow Your Mind mind as a multi media conglomerate, and uh, 0:02:03.400 --> 0:02:05.200 you can visit us at stuff to Blow your Mind 0:02:05.240 --> 0:02:07.800 dot com, where you can find blog posts by us. 0:02:08.400 --> 0:02:11.079 The podcast is obviously there, of course, but for every 0:02:11.120 --> 0:02:14.359 podcast episode we add related content so in case you're 0:02:14.440 --> 0:02:17.760 curious about learning more, Uh, there's places that you can go. 0:02:17.919 --> 0:02:20.280 And then we also do videos as well. That's right. 0:02:20.320 --> 0:02:23.400 And hey, wherever you listen to it's be it iTunes 0:02:23.800 --> 0:02:27.720 or uh Spotify or any of the various wonderful platforms 0:02:27.720 --> 0:02:30.440 out there. You can support the show by simply giving 0:02:30.480 --> 0:02:33.720 us a positive rating and positive review of the platform 0:02:33.760 --> 0:02:36.320 allows that kind of interaction. Yeah, and the last thing 0:02:36.320 --> 0:02:38.680 I'll say is before we get into Lily is don't 0:02:38.720 --> 0:02:41.079 forget to follow us on social media. If you're on Facebook, 0:02:41.080 --> 0:02:43.480 you're on Twitter, you're on Tumblr. We're on all those 0:02:43.520 --> 0:02:46.120 platforms as Blow the Mind. And we don't only post 0:02:46.200 --> 0:02:49.040 our own stuff, but we curate lots of weird science 0:02:49.080 --> 0:02:51.760 e bizarre addity type stuff that we find throughout the 0:02:51.840 --> 0:02:54.800 day as we're doing our research. That's right. So let's 0:02:54.840 --> 0:02:58.440 talk about Lily first. Why are we covering him because Lily, 0:02:58.720 --> 0:03:02.280 for people who don't know, comes up frequently. I'd say 0:03:02.320 --> 0:03:04.320 in the last year of doing the show, he's come 0:03:04.360 --> 0:03:06.280 up at least four or five times. Yeah, and in 0:03:06.360 --> 0:03:08.840 past episodes, I'm I know that we haven't had at 0:03:08.919 --> 0:03:11.200 least three episodes that have dealt with him, at least 0:03:11.240 --> 0:03:14.639 in small portions. Right. Yeah, you guys did a dolphin episode. 0:03:14.639 --> 0:03:16.800 You and Julie did a dolphin episode, and then there 0:03:16.880 --> 0:03:19.240 was the what was it, the like kind of crazy 0:03:19.320 --> 0:03:21.560 rock star life of Scientists. Yeah, yeah, we did one 0:03:21.600 --> 0:03:24.560 that was just kind of a sampler platter of different 0:03:25.680 --> 0:03:28.360 real life scientists that had sort of a weird side 0:03:28.400 --> 0:03:31.760 to them. But Lily is one of those individuals first 0:03:31.760 --> 0:03:35.280 of all, that, as we've been saying, deserves a deeper dive. 0:03:35.360 --> 0:03:37.760 He deserves a closer look because he was just he 0:03:37.840 --> 0:03:41.240 was into too many things. He really lived too many 0:03:41.320 --> 0:03:44.200 lives to just try and condense it to a quick 0:03:44.640 --> 0:03:48.200 little segment about his psychedelic dolphin research, which is what 0:03:48.320 --> 0:03:51.920 most people may think of when we mentioned John C. Lewis. 0:03:52.120 --> 0:03:54.000 This is one of those moments too where I feel 0:03:54.000 --> 0:03:57.800 like the podcast format is really at an advantage here 0:03:58.120 --> 0:04:01.560 because in our ca you know, like lots of the 0:04:01.600 --> 0:04:04.600 stuff that I've read about Lily, like you said, either 0:04:04.680 --> 0:04:08.840 focuses on one aspect of his work or another. Right, 0:04:08.920 --> 0:04:11.640 It's like it's either like the isolation tanks or it's 0:04:11.760 --> 0:04:15.280 just the dolphins. But I feel like we have the 0:04:15.280 --> 0:04:18.400 opportunity here to like gather a lot of different resources, 0:04:18.400 --> 0:04:20.520 come together and kind of try to piece it all 0:04:20.560 --> 0:04:25.160 together and figure out this like epic figure somehow, and 0:04:25.320 --> 0:04:28.080 especially the like like you said to like um for 0:04:28.120 --> 0:04:30.080 those of you who don't know, there's been two feature 0:04:30.120 --> 0:04:34.320 films at least two that we're made based on Lily 0:04:34.360 --> 0:04:36.279 as a character. The first was Day of the Dolphin 0:04:36.640 --> 0:04:39.400 with George C. Scott, and then the second one is 0:04:39.640 --> 0:04:42.599 Altered States, of Course, which is you know, we're huge 0:04:42.600 --> 0:04:45.120 fans of here, and it stars William her you know, 0:04:45.200 --> 0:04:48.279 of course, as this Lily kind of figure who takes 0:04:48.320 --> 0:04:52.600 acid in isolation tanks and then finds himself devolving basically 0:04:52.720 --> 0:04:56.240 right into various forms of proto humanity. Yeah, so he's 0:04:56.360 --> 0:04:58.599 he's he's a figure that hit the castle, a large 0:04:58.600 --> 0:05:02.080 shadow across are popular culture, and I think that can 0:05:02.120 --> 0:05:04.040 also be a stumbling block because you think of you 0:05:04.120 --> 0:05:07.640 might think of that older uh John C. Lily kind 0:05:07.640 --> 0:05:11.719 of a post hippie nut job with with a coonskin 0:05:11.920 --> 0:05:15.960 cap talking about expanded consciousness and perhaps being something of 0:05:16.000 --> 0:05:20.320 a pariah. Uh. Two individuals who were working in legitimate 0:05:20.360 --> 0:05:22.680 scientific areas that he was once a part of. Yeah, 0:05:22.680 --> 0:05:26.159 there were certainly people who did not embrace the direction 0:05:26.200 --> 0:05:28.400 that he went in towards the latter part of his career. 0:05:28.680 --> 0:05:30.840 But so this is what's interesting to me about him, 0:05:30.920 --> 0:05:33.239 especially like once we got into I knew the surface 0:05:33.320 --> 0:05:36.520 level stuff, but going back and looking at his early 0:05:36.600 --> 0:05:39.720 life and how he started off and how kind of 0:05:39.839 --> 0:05:43.920 standardized his scientific career was to begin with. It's really 0:05:43.960 --> 0:05:46.800 fascinating to see where he goes and the kind of 0:05:46.960 --> 0:05:49.479 journey that he takes everybody on. Yeah, indeed, I mean, 0:05:49.560 --> 0:05:54.400 this is a guy that was trained in medicine, psycho analysis, biophysics, 0:05:54.960 --> 0:05:57.680 um and he went from being published as a researcher 0:05:57.680 --> 0:05:59.960 in scientific journals to writing his own books about spirit 0:06:00.040 --> 0:06:02.440 ruality in the self. And one of the things that's 0:06:02.480 --> 0:06:04.600 really important about Lily I think to just like our 0:06:04.720 --> 0:06:08.440 general culture today, it's it's hard to think of this 0:06:08.480 --> 0:06:10.640 because it's from from my entire life. It's been this way. 0:06:10.680 --> 0:06:13.400 But people didn't used to think of dolphins as being 0:06:13.440 --> 0:06:17.279 intelligent mammals, that we're cute and cuddly and that we 0:06:17.320 --> 0:06:20.200 should try to keep from being killed in the ocean. Right, Yeah, 0:06:20.240 --> 0:06:22.000 that's right. I mean you go back far enough. There 0:06:21.920 --> 0:06:24.600 are various myths that involve humans turning into dolphins or 0:06:24.640 --> 0:06:28.720 vice versa, but generally speaking, before the nineteen fifties, dolphins 0:06:28.720 --> 0:06:31.119 were a pest of fishermen. They were some they were 0:06:31.160 --> 0:06:33.880 a fatty creature you might render down for various products, 0:06:34.080 --> 0:06:36.520 but nobody was giving a lot of thought to what 0:06:36.640 --> 0:06:40.480 they were thinking or indeed what their consciousness might consist of. Yeah, 0:06:40.520 --> 0:06:44.359 and so almost every account that I read about Lily 0:06:44.800 --> 0:06:48.880 traces his research with dolphins to how we treat dolphins 0:06:48.920 --> 0:06:53.000 today even too, you know, good or bad however you 0:06:53.040 --> 0:06:54.680 think of it, of like theme parks of like Sea 0:06:54.720 --> 0:06:57.720 World and things like that, but like, uh, the interaction 0:06:57.760 --> 0:07:01.719 that human beings have with dolphins or other male uh 0:07:01.880 --> 0:07:05.720 mammals in the water like whales, uh, you know, in 0:07:05.720 --> 0:07:09.200 in that kind of a setting, you know. Um, he 0:07:09.240 --> 0:07:12.720 really changed the way that we considered them as I 0:07:12.720 --> 0:07:15.200 guess partners on Earth is how he would probably put 0:07:15.200 --> 0:07:17.080 it right. Yeah, it's hard to imagine where we'd be 0:07:17.160 --> 0:07:21.640 right now, uh, considering dolphin intelligence without Lily, I mean 0:07:21.680 --> 0:07:23.440 I think, I mean, I think we would definitely get 0:07:23.480 --> 0:07:26.360 to this point where we we recognize the intelligence of 0:07:26.400 --> 0:07:30.560 the dolphin, uh and and even engaging discussions about its 0:07:30.760 --> 0:07:35.760 potential personhood. But would we have gotten there as quickly? 0:07:35.800 --> 0:07:37.560 Would we have? Would we have gotten there with as 0:07:37.640 --> 0:07:41.160 much media attention? And it all really came down to 0:07:41.440 --> 0:07:47.440 him wanting to map human consciousness, you know, the dolphin work, 0:07:47.520 --> 0:07:51.320 the isolation tanks taking NSTI. All of it really boiled 0:07:51.360 --> 0:07:54.600 back to his medical background and just trying to figure 0:07:54.640 --> 0:08:00.320 out like the physicality of human consciousness where it was. Yeah, 0:08:00.360 --> 0:08:03.000 he in in his um and later on, certainly by 0:08:03.080 --> 0:08:05.760 by the nineteen seventies, he would often talk about the 0:08:05.760 --> 0:08:08.840 province of the mind, which we reference in the title 0:08:08.880 --> 0:08:11.520 to this episode. Yeah, so here's the Lily quote that 0:08:11.600 --> 0:08:13.680 comes from you know what we what We've based the 0:08:13.720 --> 0:08:16.280 title in the episode from he says, in the province 0:08:16.320 --> 0:08:19.000 of the mind, what one believes to be true is 0:08:19.080 --> 0:08:22.600 true or becomes true with certain limits to be found 0:08:22.640 --> 0:08:27.360 experientially and experimentally. These limbs are further beliefs to be 0:08:27.400 --> 0:08:30.880 transcended in the mind. There are no limits. That was 0:08:30.880 --> 0:08:33.680 in nineteen seventy two, So this was this was a 0:08:33.720 --> 0:08:36.800 post Dolphin work going into LSD work. I'm assuming, yeah, 0:08:36.800 --> 0:08:38.520 and I think it This is a It's a great 0:08:38.559 --> 0:08:41.600 quote because it mentions this idea of the province of 0:08:41.600 --> 0:08:44.120 the mind, something that he all of his work throughout 0:08:44.120 --> 0:08:46.400 his life, as you mentioned, seems to be questing for. 0:08:46.880 --> 0:08:51.880 And then it also touches on this idea of subjective truth, 0:08:52.280 --> 0:08:56.280 which becomes an increasingly important part of his work and 0:08:56.320 --> 0:09:00.960 at times a definite flaw in his scientific work. Right. Yeah, 0:09:01.040 --> 0:09:03.960 and it's especially important to consider too, I mean, like 0:09:04.080 --> 0:09:06.720 we say, his whole life here. I read an account 0:09:06.760 --> 0:09:09.600 that when he was sixteen years old he was first 0:09:09.679 --> 0:09:12.200 starting to think about this in journals and things like 0:09:12.240 --> 0:09:14.640 that that he was working on, like as a kid. 0:09:14.760 --> 0:09:17.439 This was something that concerned Lily up until his death. 0:09:19.040 --> 0:09:21.880 So let's, uh, let's let's back up a bit then 0:09:21.920 --> 0:09:25.120 and just deal with the Lily timeline. Let's talk about 0:09:25.160 --> 0:09:28.400 where he came from and uh and take listeners and 0:09:28.480 --> 0:09:31.520 ourselves on a journey through his life whereas much of 0:09:31.520 --> 0:09:34.719 it as we can actually digest in about an hour's time. Yeah, 0:09:34.720 --> 0:09:37.000 and I'll say this too before we get into it. 0:09:37.240 --> 0:09:39.560 I found that there were a lot of differing accounts too. 0:09:39.880 --> 0:09:42.480 I mean, he was alive at just the right moment 0:09:42.480 --> 0:09:45.120 in time where it was. It wasn't like we couldn't 0:09:45.160 --> 0:09:47.640 log his life as we do now with social media, 0:09:47.720 --> 0:09:50.560 you know what I mean. And there's like some different accounts. So, 0:09:50.640 --> 0:09:52.880 like I said, when he's sixteen years old, he supposedly 0:09:52.880 --> 0:09:55.720 wrote this essay. He was born in nineteen fifteen in 0:09:55.800 --> 0:09:59.440 Saint Paul Minnesota. Uh And and this is the specific 0:10:00.080 --> 0:10:02.400 a question that was quoted as being the title of 0:10:02.440 --> 0:10:06.599 his essay, how can the mind render itself sufficiently objective 0:10:06.880 --> 0:10:10.280 to study itself? That's pretty heavy for a sixteen year old. 0:10:10.280 --> 0:10:14.000 I don't think I had thoughts like that until much later. Yeah, 0:10:14.040 --> 0:10:17.520 that's that's a that that's he was thinking big for 0:10:17.520 --> 0:10:20.080 for that age. Really. Yeah, unless that's some like revisionist 0:10:20.120 --> 0:10:22.520 history on his part. But Uh. The other thing that 0:10:22.559 --> 0:10:24.600 I thought was really interesting is my impression from the 0:10:24.640 --> 0:10:27.760 readings is that Lily came from a very wealthy family 0:10:27.800 --> 0:10:30.840 I think, UH and his father, it sounds like, wanted 0:10:30.920 --> 0:10:33.720 him to become a banker, but Lily wanted to be 0:10:33.760 --> 0:10:36.000 a scientist, and so eventually his father kind of came 0:10:36.040 --> 0:10:39.120 around and supported him going to school to study science, 0:10:39.160 --> 0:10:42.840 but also backed him financially and some of his research 0:10:42.880 --> 0:10:45.960 after school as well. Yeah, that's the that's the sense 0:10:45.960 --> 0:10:48.080 that I get from some of the resources who were 0:10:48.080 --> 0:10:50.160 looking at uh. And I do have to to mention 0:10:50.200 --> 0:10:52.320 that as far as we know, there's not a good, 0:10:52.679 --> 0:10:57.800 like solid concise biography out there, not yet, hopefully somebody's 0:10:57.840 --> 0:10:59.760 working on it. There are some very fine resources that 0:10:59.800 --> 0:11:02.240 we used for this episode and will cite those as 0:11:02.240 --> 0:11:05.960 we go. Yeah, this is a book slash movie dying 0:11:06.040 --> 0:11:09.000 to be made. Yeah yeah, I I think that, like 0:11:09.040 --> 0:11:11.400 in the same way that characters like Reich that we've 0:11:11.400 --> 0:11:14.040 talked about on the show before Shulgun just make for 0:11:14.160 --> 0:11:18.360 great like potential fictionalizations. Uh, and I think you know, 0:11:18.480 --> 0:11:20.960 I just learned this after we recorded the Reich episode. 0:11:20.960 --> 0:11:24.040 There's a feature film coming out about Reich. Oh yeah, yeah. 0:11:24.280 --> 0:11:26.640 When I was searching for artwork for it, photos from 0:11:26.679 --> 0:11:30.680 the premier came out. Alright, So Lily goes on. He 0:11:30.720 --> 0:11:35.000 gets his physics degree from cal Tech in night, receives 0:11:35.200 --> 0:11:38.640 a doctorate in medicine from the University of Pennsylvania two 0:11:39.480 --> 0:11:43.080 and as a faculty member he studies biophysics and psycho 0:11:43.160 --> 0:11:46.680 analysis at the University of Pennsylvania. Is primarily interested in 0:11:46.679 --> 0:11:50.280 the physical structures of the brain where that the conscious 0:11:50.280 --> 0:11:53.839 self might be found. So that's pretty interesting in that, 0:11:53.920 --> 0:11:57.199 like he got his he got his doctorate in medicine, right, 0:11:57.240 --> 0:12:01.400 and then he continues to do research or take classes 0:12:01.400 --> 0:12:03.960 as well as he's a faculty member. Like my understanding 0:12:03.960 --> 0:12:07.959 was the psychoanalysis stuff wasn't quite yet in the field 0:12:08.360 --> 0:12:11.199 when he was in school, but he's still dabbling and 0:12:11.600 --> 0:12:14.160 learning more and adding everything to his resume. Yeah. From 0:12:14.160 --> 0:12:17.240 an early point, we're seeing a guy who has this 0:12:17.320 --> 0:12:19.680 goal in mind, this mystery that he wants to crack, 0:12:20.000 --> 0:12:22.760 and he's gonna throw everything he has at it. And 0:12:22.800 --> 0:12:26.880 he's gonna throw it. He's gonna utilize what whatever tools 0:12:27.000 --> 0:12:32.080 he can draw on, be they UH, disciplines, pharmaceuticals, technologies. 0:12:32.160 --> 0:12:34.360 We see this throughout his life. Yeah. And in some 0:12:34.440 --> 0:12:36.160 cases it's also like where he's going to get the 0:12:36.160 --> 0:12:38.400 support from. Right. I think all of us who have 0:12:38.600 --> 0:12:41.319 like large scale creative endeavors that we're trying to push 0:12:41.640 --> 0:12:44.720 and can't find necessarily the financial backing end up making 0:12:44.760 --> 0:12:48.320 compromises and uh, come World War two, Lily ends up 0:12:48.320 --> 0:12:52.120 doing research UH. Mainly it sounds like on the physiology 0:12:52.160 --> 0:12:56.200 of high altitude of flying, uh, specifically for the Air Force, 0:12:56.600 --> 0:13:00.800 and he was inventing different devices to measure GA gas 0:13:00.920 --> 0:13:04.440 pressure for those purposes. UM. And this is one of 0:13:04.440 --> 0:13:06.679 the first times apparently that he used himself as a 0:13:06.720 --> 0:13:09.840 guinea pig, uh Lily at which he would go on 0:13:09.960 --> 0:13:11.880 to do quite a bit later in his career. In fact, 0:13:11.920 --> 0:13:14.400 I think he had sort of a like an ethos 0:13:14.440 --> 0:13:17.320 surrounding that, right that I can't remember who it was, 0:13:17.360 --> 0:13:20.560 but I read that he um he he took this 0:13:20.640 --> 0:13:24.640 from another like kind of big thinker scientist who basically said, like, 0:13:24.679 --> 0:13:27.400 if you're not willing to experiment on yourself, then you 0:13:27.440 --> 0:13:31.040 shouldn't be willing to experiment on other human beings. Uh So, 0:13:31.280 --> 0:13:33.120 and this seems to be the case here where he 0:13:33.160 --> 0:13:36.280 participated in an experiment where he was studying the effects 0:13:36.280 --> 0:13:40.800 of explosive decompression on pilots at high altitudes. Uh And 0:13:40.840 --> 0:13:43.760 by all accounts that I read, this was something that 0:13:43.800 --> 0:13:46.600 could have killed him, but he went about and did 0:13:46.600 --> 0:13:49.360 it anyways. And this is in the thirties going into 0:13:49.360 --> 0:13:52.320 the forties, alright, So after the war, we're getting into 0:13:52.600 --> 0:13:54.480 the post War War two area. We're getting into the 0:13:54.559 --> 0:13:58.520 nineteen fifties at a time uh increasingly defined by Cold 0:13:58.520 --> 0:14:02.160 War paranoia. It is during this area that Lily turns 0:14:02.200 --> 0:14:05.079 to neuroscience, which is a logical next step in this 0:14:05.240 --> 0:14:07.960 quest for consciousness. Right, And he's motivated in a large 0:14:08.000 --> 0:14:12.280 part by pioneering brain surgeon Wilder Penfield at this point. 0:14:12.760 --> 0:14:14.920 Uh And in short, what he ends up doing is 0:14:14.920 --> 0:14:19.160 he applies electronic engineering to the monitoring and mapping of 0:14:19.200 --> 0:14:23.119 the central nervous system, again drawing on the best technology 0:14:23.160 --> 0:14:25.800 available at the time to try and crack this nut 0:14:25.800 --> 0:14:27.880 of consciousness. And what I had read this is one 0:14:27.880 --> 0:14:31.520 of the first sences of his father, sorry, instances of 0:14:31.600 --> 0:14:34.800 his father funding him. His father helped him pay for 0:14:34.840 --> 0:14:37.840 the design of something he called the Baba Tron, which 0:14:37.880 --> 0:14:41.520 was a device for recording the impulses from within a 0:14:41.640 --> 0:14:45.320 rabbit's brain and they would project these impulses up onto 0:14:45.400 --> 0:14:48.760 like a television screen as waves. Um. So, the baba 0:14:48.840 --> 0:14:52.000 Tron included an array of sensors that were this is 0:14:52.000 --> 0:14:53.720 something we're gonna come back to over and over again 0:14:53.720 --> 0:14:56.360 with Lily, basically putting electrodes on the surface of the 0:14:56.360 --> 0:14:59.360 brain of different animals and human beings. Uh. And in 0:14:59.480 --> 0:15:02.440 nineteen fIF he want he published a paper that showed 0:15:02.480 --> 0:15:06.000 how to display these patterns in such a way projecting 0:15:06.040 --> 0:15:10.160 brain electrical activity on a television like screen. Uh. And 0:15:10.240 --> 0:15:13.160 I recently spent some time in the hospital. I had 0:15:13.160 --> 0:15:16.440 a family member in I see you, and I thought, wow, like, 0:15:16.560 --> 0:15:20.040 think of the just the standard hospital machinery we have 0:15:20.160 --> 0:15:23.760 that are like measuring and showing us things like oxygen 0:15:23.840 --> 0:15:28.600 levels and and uh, breathing and and and brain activity. 0:15:28.600 --> 0:15:30.840 You know, Lily was one of the pioneers and that 0:15:30.880 --> 0:15:33.640 you can thank him for that. This is a guy 0:15:33.720 --> 0:15:38.720 who who really did like impact our understanding of medicine 0:15:38.920 --> 0:15:42.400 and of thought. And you know, despite where he went 0:15:42.480 --> 0:15:45.480 down further in his career, he really did have like 0:15:45.560 --> 0:15:49.480 some contributions. Yeah, down or or out or out, Yeah, 0:15:49.520 --> 0:15:51.520 however you want to look at it. Absolutely From here 0:15:51.680 --> 0:15:54.840 he moves on to the National Institutes of Mental Health 0:15:54.920 --> 0:15:57.880 or NIM UH, and this is an area where he 0:15:58.160 --> 0:16:00.400 begins to get into a lot of interest and and 0:16:00.440 --> 0:16:02.960 at times kind of creepy work. Yeah. And I read 0:16:03.040 --> 0:16:05.240 an interesting thing that said that one of the reasons 0:16:05.240 --> 0:16:08.440 why he specifically went for this research position with NIM 0:16:08.520 --> 0:16:10.920 was that it gave him access to both the National 0:16:10.960 --> 0:16:15.120 Institute of Neurological Diseases, because that would give him access 0:16:15.160 --> 0:16:18.200 to resources about the physical brain, but it also gave 0:16:18.280 --> 0:16:21.360 him access to the National Institute of Mental Health, which 0:16:21.400 --> 0:16:23.600 focused on the mind, and he really wanted to combine 0:16:23.600 --> 0:16:27.960 the two uh, and he experimented on living brains with 0:16:28.000 --> 0:16:30.720 all these different techniques he developed, so you know, we've 0:16:30.720 --> 0:16:32.440 got the rabbits. We talked about that, but then he 0:16:32.480 --> 0:16:35.400 moved on to monkeys. His goal was to stimulate monkey 0:16:35.440 --> 0:16:39.280 brains without causing trauma or damage to their brain tissue. 0:16:39.680 --> 0:16:42.920 So he was one of the first scientists to locate Uh, 0:16:42.960 --> 0:16:45.440 this is a monkey brain, not a human brain, obviously, 0:16:45.480 --> 0:16:48.640 but he located their pain and pleasure centers, and his 0:16:48.760 --> 0:16:52.160 work there allowed him to map their neural networks and 0:16:52.200 --> 0:16:56.480 to link sensory events, muscle movement, and other behaviors related 0:16:56.520 --> 0:16:58.520 to the activity in their brain. This is going to 0:16:58.560 --> 0:17:01.160 be important later on when we get the dolphins. Yeah, 0:17:01.240 --> 0:17:05.240 and this is my understanding. Some it's pretty invasive surgery 0:17:05.359 --> 0:17:08.639 at this point in experimentation, and he spends essentially a 0:17:08.680 --> 0:17:13.919 decade working on it. Here uh again connecting invasive of 0:17:14.040 --> 0:17:18.560 vivisections of the cranium. And this is where things get 0:17:18.560 --> 0:17:23.320 into some creepier territory. Um. Again, he's laser focused on 0:17:23.359 --> 0:17:25.760 his goal, but he is an employ of NIM. He's 0:17:25.760 --> 0:17:29.040 working in the in the time of nineteen fifties Cold 0:17:29.040 --> 0:17:32.840 War paranoia. Uh, it's US versus the Soviets. There's they're 0:17:32.880 --> 0:17:37.560 all these fears of of of mind control, brainwashing, uh, 0:17:37.720 --> 0:17:43.200 all sorts of strange counter espionage techniques, and according to D. 0:17:43.440 --> 0:17:47.280 Graham Burnett's excellent paper A Mind in Water, which is 0:17:47.280 --> 0:17:49.960 published in Ryan Magazine and is available online, one could 0:17:49.960 --> 0:17:51.800 have linked to it on the landing page. He says. 0:17:52.200 --> 0:17:54.880 Lily later claimed not to care for this sort of thing, 0:17:55.119 --> 0:17:58.320 but in his prime as a government employee, he had 0:17:58.480 --> 0:18:02.160 high level security clearance. J Edgar Hoover knew him by 0:18:02.280 --> 0:18:06.560 name and was actively involved in research into brainwashing or 0:18:06.680 --> 0:18:11.000 reprogramming as it was then called, among the cognizanty sleep 0:18:11.040 --> 0:18:17.280 deprivation and operant controlled of animals with wires implanted in 0:18:17.320 --> 0:18:20.240 the pain centers of their gray matter. Unquote. Wow, so 0:18:20.359 --> 0:18:22.080 this gets back to when we were talking about we 0:18:22.280 --> 0:18:26.719 three on the animal weaponry thing. So, yeah, I can 0:18:26.760 --> 0:18:28.880 imagine with all the things we learned from that episode 0:18:28.880 --> 0:18:31.760 of like people stuffing bats into bombs and trying to 0:18:31.760 --> 0:18:34.119 figure out ways to use bees to attack people, that 0:18:34.840 --> 0:18:37.120 of course they would be looking at ways to try 0:18:37.160 --> 0:18:40.560 to stimulate their brains as well. And in the goal here, Yeah, 0:18:40.600 --> 0:18:42.639 the goal here was not just animals but humans. In 0:18:42.840 --> 0:18:47.080 an unpublished paper of Lily's titled Special Considerations of Modified 0:18:47.200 --> 0:18:50.880 Human Agents, as reconnaissance and intelligence devices. I really don't 0:18:50.920 --> 0:18:53.399 have to go much further than that just title, but 0:18:53.760 --> 0:18:56.959 he talked about such things as the quote covert and 0:18:57.080 --> 0:19:02.159 relatively safe implantation of electrodes into human brain for the 0:19:02.200 --> 0:19:07.240 push button control of the totality of motivation and of consciousness. 0:19:07.680 --> 0:19:11.560 I wonder how much Lily's sort of like beginning work 0:19:11.760 --> 0:19:15.439 set the stage for brain computer interface work you know 0:19:15.480 --> 0:19:18.600 that's being studied today, because that's obviously like a big 0:19:18.720 --> 0:19:22.399 field of um of inquiry right now. Yeah, I mean 0:19:22.400 --> 0:19:25.960 to to whatever extent his his ideas here were actually 0:19:26.520 --> 0:19:29.600 applicable given that the technology of the time, and he's 0:19:29.600 --> 0:19:33.440 certainly foreshadowing where the technology would go. He's certainly dreaming 0:19:33.480 --> 0:19:36.760 in the in the direction that we're that we're still headed. 0:19:37.160 --> 0:19:38.399 So one of the things that I was trying to 0:19:38.400 --> 0:19:40.159 figure out what we're doing the research was whether or 0:19:40.200 --> 0:19:43.399 not these were pain free methods. And I believe later 0:19:43.640 --> 0:19:46.560 in his career he definitely wanted to get to a 0:19:46.600 --> 0:19:48.720 point right Like I mentioned earlier that you know, his 0:19:48.760 --> 0:19:50.679 goal was not to cause trauma in the monkeys and 0:19:50.720 --> 0:19:53.479 not to damage their brain tissue. But I imagine it 0:19:53.520 --> 0:19:57.560 wasn't comfortable having these electrodes stuck in their brains, right, Yeah, 0:19:57.600 --> 0:19:59.480 I had my understanding. It also depended on what he 0:19:59.520 --> 0:20:03.520 was working on. So, um, you could use anesthetics on 0:20:03.680 --> 0:20:07.440 certain animals, but as we'll discuss, there are other animals 0:20:07.560 --> 0:20:10.640 that that simply stop breathing if you put them under 0:20:10.720 --> 0:20:14.080 an anesthetic, right. Yeah, And there's always there's a very 0:20:14.119 --> 0:20:18.359 interesting like, despite his profound respect for dolphins later on, 0:20:18.440 --> 0:20:20.640 there's some weird stuff that goes on with the dolphin 0:20:20.720 --> 0:20:22.879 research as well too, in terms of like kind of 0:20:22.920 --> 0:20:26.000 treating them humanely. Yeah, and uh and and certainly at 0:20:26.040 --> 0:20:29.240 this point in his career he has he's he's a 0:20:29.359 --> 0:20:34.560 very unsentimental guy. He's laser focused on this consciousness enigma. Uh. 0:20:34.760 --> 0:20:37.720 But he's not necessarily he's not he's certainly not the 0:20:37.880 --> 0:20:41.719 sort of hippie mythic figure counterculture figure we see later on. 0:20:41.920 --> 0:20:44.920 Quite the opposite. This is a guy who's on first 0:20:44.960 --> 0:20:48.040 name basis with Jaguar Hoover. He's very much a part 0:20:48.080 --> 0:20:50.320 of the establishment and kind of a scary part of 0:20:50.320 --> 0:20:52.919 the establishment. Yeah, and he is going to do what 0:20:53.000 --> 0:20:56.400 needs to be done to get the results. Right. So 0:20:56.760 --> 0:21:00.879 it's during this creepy period that little. He first learns 0:21:00.920 --> 0:21:04.879 from an oceanographer colleague that the largest brains are found 0:21:04.960 --> 0:21:07.879 in small toothed whales. Intrigued, he sets out to implant 0:21:07.920 --> 0:21:12.080 electrodes in the brains of captive dolphins at Florida's Marine Studios. 0:21:12.359 --> 0:21:15.439 Now this place still exists today under the name Marine 0:21:15.520 --> 0:21:17.959 Land of Florida. Some of our listeners have been there 0:21:17.960 --> 0:21:20.280 and can speak to it. But at the time they 0:21:20.280 --> 0:21:24.600 specialized in B movies. Really of particular note, they shot 0:21:24.640 --> 0:21:28.639 the Creature from the Black Lagoon here and Revenge of 0:21:28.640 --> 0:21:33.000 the Creature from ninety five. Wow. So John C. Lily 0:21:33.119 --> 0:21:39.439 was like peripherally involved with like universal horror, specifically the 0:21:39.520 --> 0:21:42.119 Creature from the Black Lagoon. I would I think you 0:21:42.200 --> 0:21:44.120 might have mentioned this before the podcast. How cool would 0:21:44.160 --> 0:21:46.000 it be for there to be like a Creature of 0:21:46.000 --> 0:21:49.959 the Black Lagoon remake that like mixes in some of 0:21:49.960 --> 0:21:53.479 the John C. Lily ideas of you know, both dolphin 0:21:53.560 --> 0:21:58.480 human communication but also isolation tanks and hallucinogenics. Yeah, I mean, 0:21:58.520 --> 0:22:00.359