Speaker 1: Hey, Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind. My name
Speaker 1: is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick. It's Saturday. Time
Speaker 1: to venture into the vault, this time for a movie
Speaker 1: episode that originally aired August. This was our episode about
Speaker 1: the science of two thousand one Space Odyssey. Yeah. This was,
Speaker 1: of course a tremendous amount of fun. It's one of
Speaker 1: the greatest movies ever made, um based on a fantastic book.
Speaker 1: And this was also like really our first, our first
Speaker 1: true movie episode. Getting into this pattern we've we've kept
Speaker 1: up over the past year where every month or so
Speaker 1: we'll devote an entire episode to a particular movie and
Speaker 1: then pick apart the science that is attached to it.
Speaker 1: I remember this one very fondly, so we hope you
Speaker 1: enjoy it. Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind from
Speaker 1: how Stuffworks dot com. Are you welcome to Stuff to
Speaker 1: Blow your Mind. My name is Robert Lamb and I'm
Speaker 1: Joe McCormick. And Robert, do you remember just about seventeen
Speaker 1: years ago how disappointing it was that the year two
Speaker 1: thousand one was not like the year two thousand one
Speaker 1: in the movie two thousand one Space Odyssey. Well, certainly
Speaker 1: it did not resemble the night film two thousand one
Speaker 1: of Space Odyssey. It did not resemble that that vision
Speaker 1: of the future, not exactly. We were not uh, we
Speaker 1: were not traveling. We did not have a moon base.
Speaker 1: I want my milk carton of corn to suck through
Speaker 1: a straw well that can be arranged if if that's
Speaker 1: if that's the definite uh uh, you know, futuristic experience
Speaker 1: you're looking for. But yeah, this is this is a
Speaker 1: classic science fiction film, perhaps the classic science fiction film.
Speaker 1: I mean, you can you can certainly make a case
Speaker 1: for other pivotal works of sci fi cinema, but Stanley
Speaker 1: Kubrick and Arthously Clark's two thousand and one is a
Speaker 1: film that has stood the test of time. Uh, inspired
Speaker 1: just countless other sci fi visions and uh and yeah,
Speaker 1: that definitely gave us this this sort of benchmark to
Speaker 1: look for in the future. So the reason we're talking
Speaker 1: about two thousand one of Space Odyssey is because this
Speaker 1: year that movie is actually fifty years old. It's hard
Speaker 1: to believe it half a century old. It was released
Speaker 1: in April of nine eight, and so because of the
Speaker 1: fiftieth anniversary, because the movie is so endlessly fascinating to
Speaker 1: talk about, we thought we would devote today to a
Speaker 1: discussion of two thousand one, the film itself, it's ideas,
Speaker 1: and its legacy. Robert, how old were you when you
Speaker 1: first saw two thousand one? Oh? You know, I saw
Speaker 1: it when I was pretty young, so I don't have
Speaker 1: a very um concrete memory of it. I think my
Speaker 1: dad he either he had had a VHS copy of
Speaker 1: it playing, or it was on TV. I'm not sure,
Speaker 1: but i'd say who Maybe I was eight or something.
Speaker 1: I'm not sure, but I remember it being a very
Speaker 1: interesting film to watch because it what It has this
Speaker 1: dreamlike quality to it, that is there, no matter what
Speaker 1: level of of awareness you're approaching it with as a
Speaker 1: view or you know, whether you understand the more complicated,
Speaker 1: uh science, fictional or philosophical aspects of its message, there's
Speaker 1: still this this hypnotic quality to the film that draws
Speaker 1: you in. I have a weird question about it. I
Speaker 1: wonder if a kid for whom the plot pretty much
Speaker 1: goes over their head actually understands the movie better than
Speaker 1: an adult who can grasp more of the content of
Speaker 1: the plot. Do you think about that? I mean, because
Speaker 1: the movie is. In many ways, it's almost like a
Speaker 1: more like a painting or like a you know, a
Speaker 1: work of art that is radically open to interpretation, where
Speaker 1: the stuff that the characters do, I'm not so sure
Speaker 1: that it matters as much as more the kind of
Speaker 1: like visual themes established the questions raised by you know,
Speaker 1: the spectacle before your eyes. Yeah, yeah, the spectacle is
Speaker 1: is a huge part of it. I I actually was tempted.
Speaker 1: I thought we should I let my six year old
Speaker 1: see at least part of two thousand and one and
Speaker 1: just see what his take is on it. And I
Speaker 1: did not quite get around to performing any a test
Speaker 1: of that sort um, but I have a feeling he
Speaker 1: would be drawn in by the visuals for sure. Just
Speaker 1: thinking about the visuals alone, it's hard to believe this
Speaker 1: movie is half a century old. Like we were saying
Speaker 1: a minute ago, it still feels so weird and so
Speaker 1: fresh and so intellectually adventurous. Apparently, you know. When it premiered.
Speaker 1: One of the things about the movie is that it's
Speaker 1: mostly silent. There are only actually very limited parts of
Speaker 1: it where characters are speaking to each other, and according
Speaker 1: to the stories about the premiere, the first audience is
Speaker 1: just hating. Not everybody. There were some people who saw, Okay,
Speaker 1: this is revolutionary, something very different and new, an original
Speaker 1: is happening here. But a lot of the Hollywood hot
Speaker 1: shots who were in attendance just hated it. There were
Speaker 1: tons of people walking out of the theater. Allegedly, Rock
Speaker 1: Hudson walked out saying out loud, will someone tell me
Speaker 1: what the hell this is about? Yeah, it's interesting because
Speaker 1: it is a film in which a lot of stuff
Speaker 1: does not happen, a lot happens. It's a film that
Speaker 1: that that that kind of sums up the ascent of
Speaker 1: humanity and where humanity might go beyond beyond our planet.
Speaker 1: But at the same time, every time something seems to
Speaker 1: be happening, we kind of get a cut, you know,
Speaker 1: the scenes where characters are having pivotal discussions about what's happening.
Speaker 1: It's becomes just sort of a staple of so many
Speaker 1: other films, Like most films are missing. The murder that
Speaker 1: occurs to in the film is not actually seen, so
Speaker 1: it when you're watching two thousand one of Space Odyssey,
Speaker 1: there is almost this sense that someone is messing with
Speaker 1: you by removing these key bits of him from nation
Speaker 1: that should tell you what you're supposed to think about. Well,
Speaker 1: I can understand people hating it at first because it
Speaker 1: is in a way an intentionally challenging film. It's it
Speaker 1: goes against narrative conventions in a very deliberate way. Another
Speaker 1: thing about it is just I'm not usually a person
Speaker 1: to call out special effects first as a thing to
Speaker 1: love about the movie, but the visual effects in this
Speaker 1: movie are just unparalleled in so many ways. They look
Speaker 1: astonishingly realistic. For for you know, a time in the
Speaker 1: nineteen sixties when we hadn't even been to the moon
Speaker 1: yet when this movie was made, we had not been
Speaker 1: to the moon or space. Photography was very limited, so
Speaker 1: it's amazing they could get something looking as accurate to
Speaker 1: the experience of outer space as as they did. But
Speaker 1: then at the same time, it's so derealized and so
Speaker 1: unreal and uh, it has almost kind of a Dario
Speaker 1: Argento kind of quality, though of course it predates Argento,
Speaker 1: but I mean, like the you know, the strange lights
Speaker 1: and the way the colors color our moods. It's so good. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm glad Argento did not direct it, by the way,
Speaker 1: it could have been a very different film then The Monk,
Speaker 1: The The The the Dawn of Man sequence might have
Speaker 1: been similar, but uh yeah, the special effects in this
Speaker 1: film are just so breathtaking. I feel like if anyone
Speaker 1: out there is wondering, what does it like to watch
Speaker 1: two thousand and one Space Obessee with Robert Lamb, it's like,
Speaker 1: every five minutes may sang aloud, why can't we make
Speaker 1: why don't we make movies that look like this? Now?
Speaker 1: You know, why can't why can't why don't spaceships look
Speaker 1: like this anymore? In films? And basically they don't look
Speaker 1: this good in anything else. For instance, nineteen seventy two
Speaker 1: Silent Running, another one of my favorite sci fi films,
Speaker 1: was directed by Douglas Trumbull, who worked on two thousand one,
Speaker 1: worked on the effects, and Silent Running looks fabulous, but
Speaker 1: it's not as pressed pristine as two thousand and one,
Speaker 1: And obviously you can point to a lot of different
Speaker 1: reasons for that. But then there's you know, you can
Speaker 1: you can say, well, these others were not directed by Kubrick.
Speaker 1: They maybe they did not have the budget, they didn't
Speaker 1: have the right key artistic people in place. Uh, this
Speaker 1: kind of perfect storm of creativity and intent. But but
Speaker 1: but you end up with this film that you had
Speaker 1: just looks so unlike anything else. And every single frame
Speaker 1: of this film I feel like you could you could
Speaker 1: print out, and you could put on the wall and
Speaker 1: and no one would question the choice. It's also somehow
Speaker 1: a movie that many people I think have tried to
Speaker 1: copy and been unable to. It's a movie the style
Speaker 1: of which is uncopyable. Uh My. I've talked about this
Speaker 1: a good bit with with my friend Dave. He often
Speaker 1: points out that you have the sequel to the film
Speaker 1: two thousand and ten, uh which which did not did
Speaker 1: not direct, came out in the eighties. Oh who was
Speaker 1: the guy who directed two thousand ten? Who he's the
Speaker 1: same amount gentleman and directed Outland as I Alo Cahol,
Speaker 1: Peter Hyams, and not just Outland. He made Time Cop.
Speaker 1: The guy who made thousand and ten made Time Cop. Well,
Speaker 1: it's interesting just if you just look at the trailers
Speaker 1: um between the two and you see just the stark
Speaker 1: difference because on one, on one hand, you have the
Speaker 1: again that the pristine white um, you know, almost hermetically
Speaker 1: sealed edible U seeming like you feel like you could
Speaker 1: just bite into the white chocolate goodness of the spaceships.
Speaker 1: In two thousand and one of Space hodysty and then
Speaker 1: by two thousand and ten everything is industrial and grimy,
Speaker 1: and not just the sets the order of the day
Speaker 1: it was, but but not only the sets but also
Speaker 1: the character interactions, because suddenly it's not this this very
Speaker 1: subdued performance, limited uh interaction, limited discussions between characters. No,
Speaker 1: you have Roy Schider run and center, mayor not Mayor
Speaker 1: of Amity from Jaws Chief of Police, Chief Rody. Yeah,
Speaker 1: Chief Rody is just right up front getting into you know,
Speaker 1: loud discussions with with all available characters. We're gonna need
Speaker 1: a bigger spacecraft before we keep going. And let's let's
Speaker 1: actually just listen to an excerpt from the original theatrical
Speaker 1: trailer for two thousand and one, millions of years ago,
Speaker 1: before the human race existed, an adventure began, an adventure
Speaker 1: that ultimately leads man to confront his own destiny in
Speaker 1: anticy of Exploration. Sounds great even without those impressive visuals.
Speaker 1: I feel like you still get you still hear that,
Speaker 1: and you just sucked in. Oh yeah. The music is
Speaker 1: a big part of the movie. In fact, they're they're
Speaker 1: segments of the movie where the screen is black and
Speaker 1: it's just music, and I think that's a very important
Speaker 1: part of the experience as well. So if you've never
Speaker 1: seen the movie and you don't want it spoiled, I
Speaker 1: don't know if that really makes sense with this movie,
Speaker 1: you might want to pause this and go watch it.
Speaker 1: Now we're about to talk about what happens in the plot.
Speaker 1: But I would say this is not a movie that
Speaker 1: is that is really going to be spoiled by you
Speaker 1: knowing what happens in advance. That's not really the point
Speaker 1: because it again, it leaves so much for interpretation and
Speaker 1: it's so visual. I would urge you definitely if you
Speaker 1: have the ability used to get the blue ray on
Speaker 1: this one, because this is a film where the higher
Speaker 1: definition available the better. So the movie is basically broken
Speaker 1: into four parts. Would you say that's fair? Would you
Speaker 1: say three or four? Um? I would say it's broken
Speaker 1: into four parts kind of three separate movies that are,
Speaker 1: and it will feel like that you're like, oh, I
Speaker 1: guess we're done with this section. Now, Uh, let's follow
Speaker 1: this character. So the first section you get a title card.
Speaker 1: It says the Dawn of Man, and you've got this
Speaker 1: group of early hominids. I think it's suggested, well not,
Speaker 1: I think it is definitely suggested that these are our ancestors.
Speaker 1: That you go back some number of millions of years,
Speaker 1: and they are these sort of desert savannah dwelling ap
Speaker 1: like creatures, and they are hanging around eating plants, hiding
Speaker 1: from a leopard that attacks them, and fighting with another
Speaker 1: band of apelike creatures over access to a puddle of water.
Speaker 1: And then one day they wake up and find this
Speaker 1: great black rectangle, this rectangular box that's known in the
Speaker 1: in the story is the monolith. Yea, this slab of
Speaker 1: matter that is unlike anything in their natural habitat. It's
Speaker 1: not only unlike anything they've seen, it embodies interesting mathematical
Speaker 1: characteristics like the dimension ratios are one four and nine,
Speaker 1: so it's nine units high, four units wide, and one
Speaker 1: unit deep. Of course, one four and nine are the
Speaker 1: squares of the first three integers one, two, and three.
Speaker 1: And so after first being frightened by the monolith and
Speaker 1: they kind of scream at it and do territorial displays,
Speaker 1: one of them gets the courage to go up and
Speaker 1: touch it, and then they all begin to touch it,
Speaker 1: and the encounter somehow triggers something in human evolution, and
Speaker 1: the mechanism is not explained, but something happens to these
Speaker 1: apelike creatures, right, yeah, they they this amazing sequence. They
Speaker 1: be one of them, in particular, I believe this is
Speaker 1: Moon Gazer Uh as he's referred to in the book,
Speaker 1: picks up the bone of one of these taper creatures
Speaker 1: that they're living among and realizes that he can wield
Speaker 1: it as a tool and wield it as a weapon. Right,
Speaker 1: Grabbing the femur of one of these tapers gives you leverage,
Speaker 1: and that extra leverage makes all the difference in the
Speaker 1: world for these creatures, who now suddenly have the ability
Speaker 1: to kill the tapers and eat the meat and to
Speaker 1: fight off the predators, right exactly, to fight off the leopard,
Speaker 1: to defend, to win in territorial disputes with the other
Speaker 1: with the other ape like creatures over the water puddle,
Speaker 1: and so in victory, then one of the ape like
Speaker 1: creatures throws this bone up in the air and then
Speaker 1: we get one of the most fantastic cuts in all
Speaker 1: of movie history, where the bone immediately cuts to a
Speaker 1: spacecraft above the Earth. It's like a five million year
Speaker 1: smash cut. It's also the reason that in Mystery Science
Speaker 1: Theater three thousand, the satellite of Love looks like a bone.
Speaker 1: Oh really, yeah, they said that explicitly, Joe Joel Hodgson
Speaker 1: says that explicitly. But its shaped like a cartoon bone,
Speaker 1: like the two little lobes on each side, or like
Speaker 1: a dog chew toy bone. And then of course after
Speaker 1: this we're in the age of space exploration, which is
Speaker 1: where the rest of the movie takes place. You've got
Speaker 1: this middle section that is not given a title card,
Speaker 1: so it doesn't let you know explicitly this is a
Speaker 1: different part of the story. But a character named Heywood
Speaker 1: Floyd is flying around in space travels to a space
Speaker 1: station and then to the Moon to investigate an anomaly
Speaker 1: that's been discovered on the surface of the Moon, where
Speaker 1: researchers on a moon base have discovered an underground object
Speaker 1: generating a strong magnetic field. So they dig it up
Speaker 1: and it's another monolith. Right. I should also add that
Speaker 1: it's only in this sequence that we get any dialogue.
Speaker 1: We go and what feels like an astounding amount of
Speaker 1: time in the film without any characters speaking to anyone,
Speaker 1: no narration, nothing, and it's beautiful. It's just hypnotic. Uh.
Speaker 1: The scenes of the of the Taurus space station rotating
Speaker 1: there with the classical music playing behind it. Absolutely, and
Speaker 1: that the whole thing about space stations in the sequence
Speaker 1: is a really interesting and deliberate filmmaking choice on Kubrick's part.
Speaker 1: I think, um, because very often what you want to
Speaker 1: show in in sci fi of the time. You know,
Speaker 1: if you had the sci fi of the fifties, sixties,
Speaker 1: Flash Gordon type stuff, you you would have wanted to
Speaker 1: show spaceships as an exciting, fast moving, powerful thing. But
Speaker 1: instead spacecraft in this movie are are presented as a
Speaker 1: thing as a kind of like slow moving, very careful,
Speaker 1: behemoth technology. Yeah. And uh, and I also love how
Speaker 1: the station itself that we see is unfinished. Yeah. So
Speaker 1: there's not this sense of this pristine sense of all right,
Speaker 1: humans have done it, they're in space now, they've got
Speaker 1: it all worked out. No, there's this sense that even
Speaker 1: though everything this this technological world is is so advanced
Speaker 1: compared to what we had then and also what we
Speaker 1: have now in many respects, yet it is still unfinished.
Speaker 1: It is still work in progress. We will definitely come
Speaker 1: back and talk more about the about the technological reality
Speaker 1: of the space travel sequence later. But um, so, what
Speaker 1: happens in the plus so they find this monolith on
Speaker 1: the Moon. It emits a powerful radio signal when sunlight
Speaker 1: touches it, and it seems to indicate that there's something
Speaker 1: else for them to find in orbit around Jupiter. You know,
Speaker 1: I thought we're rewatching it for this episode. This was
Speaker 1: the first time I realized that without that sequence, um,
Speaker 1: the Ark of the Covenant in Raiders at the Lost
Speaker 1: Ark would have been very different, because clearly that's where
Speaker 1: Steven Spielberg got the inspiration for the way the arc
Speaker 1: is presented. You mean the opening scene at the end
Speaker 1: of the movie. Yes, yeah, don't look at it, yes exactly.
Speaker 1: You know, that scene I think takes a page from
Speaker 1: two thousand one in multiple ways. There's the sort of
Speaker 1: staging of the scene which is clearly esthetically derived from
Speaker 1: two thousand one. But I think also the mystery of
Speaker 1: the scene, how it's not really fully explained, how Indie
Speaker 1: No is not to look at it, you know, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I agree. Interesting bit of Hollywood gossip trivia. But during
Speaker 1: the filming of Raiders, Uh, the art in the monolith
Speaker 1: we're actually dating. Not many people know that. It should
Speaker 1: have known better than to trust an arc and Arkell
Speaker 1: break your heart every time. So then we go to
Speaker 1: the next sequence, the third sequence of the movie, which
Speaker 1: is a crude mission to Jupiter in a spacecraft called
Speaker 1: Discovery one. So you've got several crew members who are
Speaker 1: in hibernation, and then you've got two astronauts named David
Speaker 1: Bowman and Frank Poole who are awake, and the Discovery One,
Speaker 1: we find out, is controlled by an onboard artificial intelligence
Speaker 1: called HOW nine thousand. It's always been fun to point out,
Speaker 1: especially years ago when I was wrestling with the sluggish
Speaker 1: IBM for eighty six, that, of course HOW as an acronym,
Speaker 1: is just one letter removed from IBM HL. I actually
Speaker 1: never put that together before. I don't know if that
Speaker 1: was intentional. I assume it was. But How advertises the
Speaker 1: fact that he, you know, he's an artificial intelligence. He
Speaker 1: has conversations with people. He sort of presents himself as
Speaker 1: in many ways a person. He straight up says that
Speaker 1: he has consciousness, kind of off handedly. But uh, and
Speaker 1: He also advertises that he is perfect and that he
Speaker 1: is incapable of error, and of course, when How begins
Speaker 1: to appear to malfunction, Bowman and Pool are really troubled
Speaker 1: by this, so they secretly decide to take How offline
Speaker 1: and complete the mission under human control without the artificially
Speaker 1: intelligent computer. How becomes aware of their plans and tries
Speaker 1: to kill them. Uh. He believes that if he's deactivated,
Speaker 1: it will put the mission in jeopardy, so How kills
Speaker 1: Frank Pool during a spacewalk and then tries to kill
Speaker 1: David Bowman, but Bowman manages to get inside the ship
Speaker 1: and deactivate the computer. And as he's doing this, there's
Speaker 1: this long, strange sequence where How begs for his life
Speaker 1: and I forgot how how unnerving that whole sequence is,
Speaker 1: while where the computer is begging not to be killed,
Speaker 1: while the while the astronaut is taking out its memory. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: just the what are you doing day? We tend to
Speaker 1: I feel like I tend to remember just a little
Speaker 1: bit of it that it does. It goes on for
Speaker 1: a while as he's slowly removing he well, first as
Speaker 1: he's gaining access to the chamber, and then slowly removing
Speaker 1: each of those cards, and then in the final sequence
Speaker 1: of the movie, Bowman reaches the destination on Jupiter and
Speaker 1: discovers another monolith there in orbit around Jupiter, and this monolith,
Speaker 1: unlike the others, which were just solid objects, appears to
Speaker 1: be some kind of doorway or gateway, which begins this
Speaker 1: surreal sequence that ends the movie, where Bowman is apparently
Speaker 1: taken across vast distances and shown incomprehensible sites. We it's
Speaker 1: it's hard to know exactly how literally to take the
Speaker 1: things that he appears to be seeing. We're showing a
Speaker 1: lot of things, apparently from his perspective that are just
Speaker 1: colors and hard to understand. Yeah, there's this sense that
Speaker 1: is definitely an acid trip vibe to it. I mean
Speaker 1: some of the visuals so where we see these sort
Speaker 1: of cosmic explosions taking place like those are are are
Speaker 1: films of like oil, uh that are very similar to
Speaker 1: some of those, like those oil projection patterns that you
Speaker 1: see in like sixties musical performances, whether you know, projected
Speaker 1: on the on the screen or on the band itself.
Speaker 1: It reminds me of like stand brackage movies like if
Speaker 1: you've ever seen a Dog, Starman or anything like that,
Speaker 1: Experimental films that have a lot of things like close
Speaker 1: ups of liquids being pressed between pains of glasts and stuff. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that sort of thing. So you're you're left wondering, is
Speaker 1: this is this the gateway that were as we're seeing it,
Speaker 1: Is this just like the the crazy um psychedelic experience
Speaker 1: that is that is happening to Bowman as he's kind
Speaker 1: of like squeeze through the fabric of reality and you know,
Speaker 1: with space and time warping all around him. Is this
Speaker 1: essentially Stephen King's the Jaunt because he looks like he's
Speaker 1: jaunting and some of those skills that we see, Yes,
Speaker 1: so like his visions seem to be intercut with these
Speaker 1: stills of his face being blurred and warped and like
Speaker 1: he's losing his mind. And then Bowman finally ends up
Speaker 1: in a strange room that has like a glowing floor
Speaker 1: and neo classical furniture and decorations, and a lot of
Speaker 1: people have argued over what this scene means, but he
Speaker 1: essentially sees himself other versions of himself and then becomes
Speaker 1: them as an older and older version of himself. It
Speaker 1: seems to sort of suggest that many years passed with
Speaker 1: him living in this room, but it's not exactly clear.
Speaker 1: And then finally he's laying in bed, apparently near death,
Speaker 1: and another monolith stands at the foot of his bed,
Speaker 1: and he appears transformed into some kind of glowing newborn
Speaker 1: baby with these creepy adult eyes. Adult eyes on a
Speaker 1: baby is just the most horrifying side. But it's this
Speaker 1: new form of humanity shown. And then he has finally
Speaker 1: shown hovering back over Earth, and a lot of people
Speaker 1: have argued, what does this mean? Has he come back
Speaker 1: to Earth to what has he been transformed? Is he
Speaker 1: back here to share some kind of knowledge with us?
Speaker 1: Is he back here to do something to observe us,
Speaker 1: to destroy Earth? Yeah? Or indeed, I mean it's also
Speaker 1: open to interpretation. Really, like, how literally should I take this? Is?
Speaker 1: I mean, how much of the later portions of the
Speaker 1: film are just purely uh, you know, metaphoric. Am I
Speaker 1: supposed to really think about him becoming a giant star
Speaker 1: child and orbiting the planet um? And certainly there's a
Speaker 1: lot of evidence of support that you are. But then
Speaker 1: on the other hand, I always feel like any kind
Speaker 1: interpretation is always an equal opportunity game. I feel like
Speaker 1: you can equally say, well, this is this is all
Speaker 1: happening within the head of Bowman, or this is just
Speaker 1: kind of this is kind of pointing the direction for
Speaker 1: the future evolution of of human civilization now that they
Speaker 1: have essentially made contact with this higher power. One of
Speaker 1: the things I love about two thousand one is that
Speaker 1: I think it is a movie that is deliberately made
Speaker 1: to have extremely compelling symbolic significance, but symbolic in the
Speaker 1: in the original true sense of the word symbolic, meaning
Speaker 1: something that is not just a sign pointing to one
Speaker 1: correct interpretation, but an intention all in valid way accused
Speaker 1: to lots of different themes like that, there are there
Speaker 1: are many I think legitimate differend interpretations of two thousand one. Yeah,
Speaker 1: Like when I watch it now, I definitely get a
Speaker 1: sense of like he becomes a baby at the end,
Speaker 1: so as an adult and as an adult with with
Speaker 1: a child, it's like, I see, this is a new beginning,
Speaker 1: like this is all, you know, a new possibility for
Speaker 1: Bowman and or the human race. But when I think
Speaker 1: I do remember watching it as a child, and that
Speaker 1: last section of the film was like just you know,
Speaker 1: super confusing as one would imagine. It was just dream
Speaker 1: like but also hypnotic. Like I said, but when he
Speaker 1: becomes a baby. Watching it as a child, I was
Speaker 1: kind of like, oh, he's he's dead. You know, this
Speaker 1: is this is a reduction. You know. It's like he
Speaker 1: was this capable, grown up astronaut hero dude, and now
Speaker 1: he's a star baby. We've taught a horrible fate. We've
Speaker 1: talked about that before, like, why is it that when
Speaker 1: you're a child, the greatest insult is to call something
Speaker 1: a baby, you know, like that that seems like a
Speaker 1: really horrible thing when you're a kid. But now, of
Speaker 1: course there's adults you would like, no, wait, I want
Speaker 1: another life. Yeah, let me go back. Yeah. And plus
Speaker 1: you know he's in he's orbiting in space, and and
Speaker 1: uh and some of the sequel material and the literary
Speaker 1: material accompting a demonstrate he has powers beyond well beyond
Speaker 1: that of a normal child. But but that's outside of
Speaker 1: the movie itself, and we're largely just talking about the film.
Speaker 1: There is one thing that has always stood out to
Speaker 1: me about the movie in a way that makes it
Speaker 1: almost completely unique among stories I can think of, and
Speaker 1: that is that the human characters are dull, I mean dull,
Speaker 1: and it's great anyway. In fact, I think it's great
Speaker 1: because they're dull. And so let me try to explain
Speaker 1: what I mean. Uh, no human character really says almost
Speaker 1: anything of interest in the movie. Most of the movie
Speaker 1: is without dialogue, and when the characters do talk, almost
Speaker 1: everything they say is banal. And so I want to
Speaker 1: say something about the movie that I would scoff at
Speaker 1: in pretty much any other context. And so I think
Speaker 1: the characters are boring on purpose and it works. Now. Normally,
Speaker 1: if a movie had boring characters and somebody who liked
Speaker 1: the movie tried to defend it by saying, oh, but
Speaker 1: it's that way on purpose, I'd be like, oh okay,
Speaker 1: because I mean, you know, if you've been in a
Speaker 1: creative writing class, you've heard that kind of excuse. Somebody's like,
Speaker 1: your story doesn't make any sense of right, it's not
Speaker 1: supposed to make any sense. It's like, well, congratulations, good job.
Speaker 1: I mean, most of the time that's just excuse making
Speaker 1: for a failure of somebody to you know, create something
Speaker 1: in a compelling way. Um, but two thousand one is
Speaker 1: a big exception. I think the human characters are boring.
Speaker 1: I think it's that way on purpose, because judging from
Speaker 1: Kubrick's other movies, we know he could create characters that
Speaker 1: were interesting, and somehow the movie is better because they're boring.
Speaker 1: It makes us feel the movie's themes in an even
Speaker 1: more powerful way. And I think the reason is that
Speaker 1: this is a movie where the individual characters are not
Speaker 1: the protagonists. The protagonist is somehow the meta organism of
Speaker 1: the evolving intelligence of the human species. Uh, It's like
Speaker 1: the abstract entity of human civilization and human potential. And
Speaker 1: it's hard to tell a story like that and make
Speaker 1: it interesting without sort of anchoring it within some character
Speaker 1: who symbolizes everything you're talking about. But Clarke and Kubrick,
Speaker 1: I think did it here. Like in the face of
Speaker 1: the Cosmos, each individual human is vanishingly insignificant and banal,
Speaker 1: but the potential of an intelligent civilization is vast and unimaginable.
Speaker 1: That's a good read. I like that. Um yeah, these
Speaker 1: these cars, so they're they're sort of two levels to
Speaker 1: my interpretation on it. On one, I can't help but
Speaker 1: look at it now and certainly as a Night is
Speaker 1: a film from the nineteen sixties, and this is uh,
Speaker 1: this is a predominantly white male movie. Yeah. Uh, there
Speaker 1: are some waspy characters and and they are they are
Speaker 1: dull to your point. So it's it's interesting to watch
Speaker 1: it and kind of tear that apart because on one
Speaker 1: level you're thinking, oh, well, this is just speaking to
Speaker 1: the zeitgeist at the time, and then how much of
Speaker 1: it is this intentional process? Uh? And and I do
Speaker 1: agree with you, I think it is intentional. We have
Speaker 1: those scenes, um, where the crew members are interacting with
Speaker 1: How and how is so much more interesting than the
Speaker 1: more human character like I know How far more than
Speaker 1: I know Bowman. Um. Likewise, I know a moon Gazer
Speaker 1: more than I know most of the characters in the
Speaker 1: film that we we see that that ape in particular,
Speaker 1: like struggling through stuff, figuring stuff out, and you get
Speaker 1: arguably you get more of a sense of of of
Speaker 1: his values as opposed to the values of Bowmen. A
Speaker 1: moon Gazer is definitely a more interesting character than Heywood Floyd. Um.
Speaker 1: I want to say one more thing about the just
Speaker 1: the pace of the film, and uh, this film is
Speaker 1: it is a rarity compared to so many other films,
Speaker 1: because it does have this lethargic well, I wouldn't say lethargic,
Speaker 1: I would say quo ludic of pace where everything is
Speaker 1: is hypnotic and chill, but also just really drawn out,
Speaker 1: or at least as far as my movie going experience goes,
Speaker 1: I I do not become impatient with it um. But
Speaker 1: it's it's having those spaces, having room to breathe in
Speaker 1: the film that allows you to think more about what's
Speaker 1: going on, to contemplate the symbols. And I think there
Speaker 1: is also something to be said for the spaces that
Speaker 1: are afforded by the absence of uh, you know, a
Speaker 1: bunch of of of of are being arguably unnecessary conversation
Speaker 1: among the characters, or character development or emotional resonance with
Speaker 1: these characters. By by keeping them so slim and kind
Speaker 1: of abstract, I'm forced to think more about them like
Speaker 1: this is I think one of the reasons that I'm
Speaker 1: so drawn to terrible science fiction films as well, right
Speaker 1: are just bad or mediocre ones, because in those films,
Speaker 1: you know, they may have the same frenzied pace of
Speaker 1: any other action movie. They might you know, and they
Speaker 1: might not even have that much intelligent content to them,
Speaker 1: but the spaces are there in the quality of the film. Uh,
Speaker 1: And I'm for and you know, they don't give me
Speaker 1: enough to play with as far as characters go or plot,
Speaker 1: But I'm but I can set there and just think
Speaker 1: about something interesting on the set. I so you and
Speaker 1: I've had this conversation before, and it's definitely true that
Speaker 1: this is part of what draws me to bad movies
Speaker 1: as well. For some reason, I find a lot of
Speaker 1: bad movies thought provoking in the way that a lot
Speaker 1: of competent movies are not. Because a competent movie will
Speaker 1: get you sucked into the plot more than a bad
Speaker 1: movie will. And when you're sucked into a plot, there
Speaker 1: are a lot of pleasures in that as well. Like
Speaker 1: I enjoy being sucked into the plot of a movie.
Speaker 1: It it gets you into that flow state you sort
Speaker 1: of like forget yourself and you just become awareness of
Speaker 1: this other narrative. That's all great and great fun, but
Speaker 1: they're a different kind of great fun and stimulation to
Speaker 1: be had. And the way you watch a story or
Speaker 1: a movie that does not arrest you in constant plot
Speaker 1: developments and and the character's emotions, and two thousand one
Speaker 1: does that in a in a very different way than
Speaker 1: a bad movie does. Two thousand one is a movie
Speaker 1: full of breathing room. Like you're saying it. It's constantly
Speaker 1: allowing you to think about what you're seeing, rather than
Speaker 1: just being pulled along by it. The late Roger Ebert
Speaker 1: has an essay about two thousand one from his Great
Speaker 1: Film Series where he talks about the the appeal of
Speaker 1: the movie and one of the things he says, I
Speaker 1: just wanted to quote. He says, quote. Only a few
Speaker 1: films are transcendent and work upon our minds and imaginations,
Speaker 1: like music or prayer or a vast, belittling landscape. Most
Speaker 1: movies are about characters with a goal in mind who
Speaker 1: obtained it after difficulties, either comic or dramatic. Two thousand
Speaker 1: one of Space Odyssey is not about a goal, but
Speaker 1: about a quest, a need. It does not hook its
Speaker 1: effects on specific lot points, nor does it ask us
Speaker 1: to identify with Dave Bowman or any other character. It
Speaker 1: says to us, we became men when we learned to think.
Speaker 1: Our minds have given us the tools to understand what
Speaker 1: we live and who we are now it is time
Speaker 1: to move on to the next step, to know that
Speaker 1: we live not on a planet but among the stars,
Speaker 1: and that we are not flesh but intelligence. Oh that's good.
Speaker 1: I think that says a lot of what I feel
Speaker 1: about the movie. Yeah, this is one of those cases
Speaker 1: where I definitely agree with Leebert. I find that I
Speaker 1: either completely agree with what he said had to say
Speaker 1: about a film where I strongly disagree. Oh yeah, well,
Speaker 1: I mean, the best kind of critic is the critic
Speaker 1: who you like reading even when you fully disagree with absolutely.
Speaker 1: All right, Well, on that note, we're going to take
Speaker 1: a break, and when we come back, we're gonna talk
Speaker 1: some more about two thousand and one of Space Odyssey,
Speaker 1: about how it came to be and many of the
Speaker 1: fabulous sci fi but thoroughly stuff to blow your mind
Speaker 1: ideas that are utilized in the film. Thank alright, we're back.
Speaker 1: So Supposedly, two thousand one of Space Odyssey was developed
Speaker 1: by Kubrick and Arthur C. Clark on the basis of
Speaker 1: an idea from an earlier story by Clark. Right, yeah,
Speaker 1: a story known as The Sentinel also known as the
Speaker 1: Sentinel of Eternity. Uh. This was published in nineteen fifty one. Basically,
Speaker 1: it's a story about an alien artifact in the form
Speaker 1: of a mineral pyramid buried on the Moon, and Clark
Speaker 1: has apparently complained that the story contains so little of
Speaker 1: what's in two thousand one that it really shouldn't be
Speaker 1: said that two thousand one is based on it. But
Speaker 1: I don't know. I mean, it seems like it's there.
Speaker 1: There's a monolith on the moon. It might not be
Speaker 1: shaped the same way, but that that's already a compelling idea. Right,
Speaker 1: we go to the Moon and we find something they're
Speaker 1: waiting for us. Though there's an interesting, all alternate take
Speaker 1: on what the function of that object on the Moon
Speaker 1: could be. There's the idea that what if aliens left
Speaker 1: behind some kind of technological intelligence detector alarm that recognizes
Speaker 1: a certain point of technological development in the human species
Speaker 1: and then sends a signal back home saying like, oh
Speaker 1: now watch out, these guys are coming. Well that yeah,
Speaker 1: it's kind of yeah, cosmic security alarm. Yeah. I've also
Speaker 1: read that there there's at least one earlier Clark's story
Speaker 1: that closely resembles the Dawn of Man segment, and one
Speaker 1: thing to keep in mind here is of course, that
Speaker 1: the Clark was a was a prolific writer. He wrote
Speaker 1: a number of sci fi stories. By the time two
Speaker 1: thousand and one came into production, he had established himself
Speaker 1: as a major sci fi writer and also experienced success
Speaker 1: as a science writer, often dealing with topics related to futurism,
Speaker 1: computer space travel. Uh. So he he already had a
Speaker 1: career in which he had gotten to explore so many
Speaker 1: of these concepts, so it makes sense that two thousand
Speaker 1: one would be a further refinement of those ideas. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and Clark was known as a as a writer of
Speaker 1: what it might be a silly word, but what's often
Speaker 1: known as hard science. Not not like space pirates and uh,
Speaker 1: space fantasy, but science fiction that's based on some reasonable
Speaker 1: appreciation of the laws of nature. Right and uh. There
Speaker 1: is a novel, two thousand and one, but it's worth
Speaker 1: noting that he wrote it concurrently with the film, so
Speaker 1: the film is not based upon two thousand and one
Speaker 1: of Space Oudissey the book, but they both emerge from
Speaker 1: the same process, and the book is worth checking out.
Speaker 1: I especially enjoyed the Dawn of Man portion of the book,
Speaker 1: because you do get to spend more time with those apes.
Speaker 1: And they have names. They have names, yeah, such as
Speaker 1: moon Gazer. Yeah. Now, of course, Stanley Kubrick was well
Speaker 1: established as a respected filmmaker by the time he made
Speaker 1: two thousand one. Right. His previous film, uh, you know,
Speaker 1: prior to this was Dr Strange Love from sixty four.
Speaker 1: He directed the excellent Spartacus in nineteen sixty ninety seven
Speaker 1: Paths of Glory. But nothing, nothing prior to two thousand one.
Speaker 1: I would say, really, you know, points towards this as
Speaker 1: like the next logical evolution of Kubrick's uh filmography. I mean,
Speaker 1: Kubrick experts may discrew with me on that there, and
Speaker 1: maybe you can, you can, you can point to examples
Speaker 1: to that, but for the most part, like this is
Speaker 1: this is suddenly a sci fi epic, a space epic, uh,
Speaker 1: from someone who has not really dipped their toes in
Speaker 1: any kind of genre material previously. Well, I mean, I
Speaker 1: think it makes sense that his career would take a
Speaker 1: turn like this at this time. This is night, I
Speaker 1: mean this, this is a year of change for the
Speaker 1: modern world. It's often recognized as this this pivotal turning
Speaker 1: point where you know, modernity becomes whatever the world is
Speaker 1: now that there's some kind of upheaval, changing of culture,
Speaker 1: changing of values, a rebellion against the old ways. And
Speaker 1: in two thousand one is definitely that in terms of
Speaker 1: many aspects of filmmaking. Yeah, yeah, it's I mean, it's
Speaker 1: almost as if in sixty eight a crazy space Break
Speaker 1: came to be all touched it right. Yeah. Now, of
Speaker 1: course we we know from Kubrick's later films, you know
Speaker 1: he would he would definitely explore more, you know, genre territory,
Speaker 1: weirder territory with works like seventy ones, Clockwork, Orange Nighties,
Speaker 1: The Shining Um. But but those are still far more
Speaker 1: narrative and traditional films compared with two thousand one. Two
Speaker 1: thousand one stands out even in a filmography such as Kubricks.
Speaker 1: And of course we also have to recognize that Doulas
Speaker 1: Douglas Trumbull, who I mentioned earlier, the visual effects Wizard,
Speaker 1: largely responsible for the many amazing lasting effects in the film.
Speaker 1: He also went on to work on Blade Runner, another
Speaker 1: great looking movie, Yeah, Star Trek the motion picture, And
Speaker 1: also he was at least in an advisory capacity on
Speaker 1: A Tree of Life. I never saw it yet, Oh
Speaker 1: it's good. Yeah. Uh And and of course, as I mentioned,
Speaker 1: he directed one of my favorite sci fi films of
Speaker 1: the era, V two, Silent Running, starring Bruce Dern. I
Speaker 1: don't know if I've asked this before, but which came first,
Speaker 1: Silent Running or the Lorax? Oh? Well, let's see, Laura
Speaker 1: is one and influence on the other. Well, I'm not
Speaker 1: sure enough, Han, I'd have to ask you to look
Speaker 1: up when when the Laura emerged from his stump. The
Speaker 1: Laura X was published in ninety one, one year before
Speaker 1: Silent Running. Maybe they kind of emerged from the same stump.
Speaker 1: I mean they're both emerging from. Again, we we have to,
Speaker 1: like you pointed out in sixty eight, we have to
Speaker 1: think about this the various changes that were occurring there
Speaker 1: is revolutions that were occurring in uh in in the
Speaker 1: in the zeitgeist, in the way people were in interacting
Speaker 1: with their world, and certainly the environmental movement was one
Speaker 1: of those. Uh. And both the lo Ax and the
Speaker 1: Silent Running, you know, echo those sentiments. Well, Robert, are
Speaker 1: you ready to drill down and focus on some individual
Speaker 1: elements in the movie. Let's do it. So we wanted
Speaker 1: to just look at some aspects of different parts of
Speaker 1: the film, ideas explored there, what's interesting or what's scientifically accurate,
Speaker 1: what's not um And so I guess it would make
Speaker 1: sense to first start with the Dawn of Man segment,
Speaker 1: the the segment with the ape like creatures that are
Speaker 1: exposed to the monolith and somehow learned to use tools,
Speaker 1: which are, by the way, some of the best looking
Speaker 1: ape suits you will find in any motion picture. I mean,
Speaker 1: Hollywood history is replete with ape suits great, great and small,
Speaker 1: and and good and bad, and man, I love a
Speaker 1: bad ape suit, like I love the movie Robot Monster
Speaker 1: or the Aliens that invade Earth, or like it's a
Speaker 1: guerrilla suit with a fish bowl on the head. But
Speaker 1: but yeah, these are some good suits, good suits, and
Speaker 1: great performances to you had a very physical mime performances
Speaker 1: that brought these to life based on the movements of
Speaker 1: actual primates. And then of course we have actual primates
Speaker 1: and the scenes as well, because you have actual chimp
Speaker 1: uh like young chimps standing in as the young members
Speaker 1: of this tribe. And the weird thing is, you don't
Speaker 1: necessarily even think about it when you're watching it, Like
Speaker 1: everything works so well in that scene, you're not thinking, oh,
Speaker 1: we have people in ape costumes and actual apes. That's
Speaker 1: a good point. So I was wondering, you know, is
Speaker 1: there any way of looking at this and saying, how
Speaker 1: how realistic is this? I mean, obviously we don't know
Speaker 1: everything about our ancestors from this period, and that that
Speaker 1: part of the movie does not say exactly how long
Speaker 1: ago it is, though in the middle part Heywood Floyd
Speaker 1: says that the monolith on the Moon is four million
Speaker 1: years old, So if they're all roughly the same age,
Speaker 1: if they would put there at the same time, that
Speaker 1: might put this scene on Earth around four million years ago.
Speaker 1: So I was wondering what were our ancestors like then?
Speaker 1: And supposedly the last common ancestor of humans and chimpanzees
Speaker 1: lived sometime between about ten and about four million years ago,
Speaker 1: and the hominids depicted in this scene appeared to be
Speaker 1: would you say, semi bipedal, like not standing upright but
Speaker 1: often perched in a crouch on two legs and uh
Speaker 1: able to stand up, but often sort of hunkered near
Speaker 1: the ground. Yeah, I would definitely say that. But then,
Speaker 1: of course, when the one hominid gains the use of
Speaker 1: a bone tool. This one finally begins to stand upright
Speaker 1: in a full fighting posture. And as best I can tell,
Speaker 1: there's still vigorous debate in the scientific community about the
Speaker 1: origins of human bipedalism. This is not a settled question.
Speaker 1: Used to be commonly assumed that human ancestors began to
Speaker 1: walk upright on two legs when they moved down from
Speaker 1: the trees, down from an arboreal environment onto the grasslands
Speaker 1: and the savannah, and so they stood up, you know.
Speaker 1: The classic explanation was stood up to see over the
Speaker 1: grass but for whatever reason, down on the savannah, that
Speaker 1: that's when we started going by peedle. And this was
Speaker 1: still a dominant explanation in the nineteen sixties when two
Speaker 1: thousand one was made. But this idea, I think is
Speaker 1: has largely fallen out of favor in the past couple
Speaker 1: of decades for several reasons, one of which is evidence
Speaker 1: that seems to show that humans were still primary tree dwellers,
Speaker 1: or at least highly adapted to climbing and living in
Speaker 1: trees after they became bipetle So that's a strange kind
Speaker 1: of upset of the picture. A lot of people have
Speaker 1: of human evolution. But there's evidence, say from from ancient
Speaker 1: Hamay skeletons like Australian epithesnes, that at the same time
Speaker 1: our legs seemed to show that we had upright posture,
Speaker 1: we also still had shoulder blades and hands adapted for
Speaker 1: living in a tree environment. So the picture of this
Speaker 1: movie paints was probably more uh was more a feature
Speaker 1: of the dominant theories of the time and wouldn't be
Speaker 1: quite so accurate today. But the picture it paints of
Speaker 1: the the origin of tool use, I think has always
Speaker 1: been a really fascinating thing. Earlier I mentioned that essay
Speaker 1: by Roger Ebert about the movie in his Great Movie
Speaker 1: Series and and he says this. Also. He says, quote
Speaker 1: in the in the first movement of the film, quote
Speaker 1: prehistoric apes confronted by a mysterious black monolith, teach themselves
Speaker 1: that bones can be used as weapons, and thus discover
Speaker 1: the first tools. I have always felt that the smooth
Speaker 1: artificial surfaces and right angles of the monolith, which was
Speaker 1: obviously made by intelligent beings, triggered the realization in the
Speaker 1: ape brain that intelligence could be used to shape the
Speaker 1: objects of the world. I think that is fascinating because
Speaker 1: so he's saying that it's not necessarily even something magic
Speaker 1: about the monolith. You know, that it did something physical
Speaker 1: to their brains maybe, but that it literally could have
Speaker 1: just been a form, like a form that they observed
Speaker 1: that they've never seen before, and by simply seeing this
Speaker 1: form it triggered something in them, just kind of like
Speaker 1: mere inspiration to say, oh, shapes like that are possible. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and I wonder, I mean, I do wonder if something
Speaker 1: like that is, but not so much that aliens put
Speaker 1: a thing on the earth. But I mean you always
Speaker 1: have to wonder about those moments, like we don't know
Speaker 1: the answer of what triggered the evolution of hominid intelligence
Speaker 1: millions of years ago, which eventually led to language and
Speaker 1: tool use in human civilization and all that. But one
Speaker 1: is tempted to imagine individual on the ground scenarios like,
Speaker 1: obviously we've got an intellectual capacity to make and use tools,
Speaker 1: but to some extent there had to be moments of
Speaker 1: proto cultural and technological transition, right, a moment when an
Speaker 1: ancient hominid suddenly understood that an inanimate object like a
Speaker 1: stick or a bone could be used as a tool.
Speaker 1: To do something or could be used in a different
Speaker 1: way than it had been used before. And it's it's
Speaker 1: just amazing to wonder what did that moment look like?
Speaker 1: What did she see or hear or feel that allowed
Speaker 1: that jump across the chasm of of how an object
Speaker 1: can be manipulated and used. Yeah, and indeed it was
Speaker 1: probably not so cinematic R and I. It's easy to imagine, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, an individual making a discovery like that and
Speaker 1: then either not utilizing it, uh and treating it as
Speaker 1: a curio or dying before they can pass it on.
Speaker 1: And then someone else, another individual has to make the
Speaker 1: same discovery years later, and maybe that one picks up.
Speaker 1: Maybe it doesn't, um, but certainly it works. I feel
Speaker 1: like the scene itself in the film works as a
Speaker 1: great illustration of this overall movement. I almost feel like
Speaker 1: this is something that, you know, I want evolutionary anthropologists
Speaker 1: to think about, like, is is there a site that
Speaker 1: could have been seen somehow away, a way of mimicking
Speaker 1: something seen in the environment that could produce the inspiration
Speaker 1: for tool use. But we'll have to have to maybe
Speaker 1: look into this, because two use among animals is always
Speaker 1: a fascinating topic, and it's something we continue to learn
Speaker 1: more and more about, particularly thinking about the but believe
Speaker 1: they're largely German experiments taking place with with the tool
Speaker 1: using birds and observing how into what degree they'll use uh,
Speaker 1: you know, sticks on various tasks. Oh yeah, we've done
Speaker 1: We've done whole episodes on bird intelligence, and yeah, there's
Speaker 1: extensive tool used by birds. Crows and corvids show really
Speaker 1: startling kinds of tool use, you know, on the level
Speaker 1: of what you'd you'd expect to see from an ape. Right, yeah,
Speaker 1: so yeah, what what did it look like the first
Speaker 1: the first crow to to actually pick up a twig
Speaker 1: and use it as a tool. What might that have
Speaker 1: looked like if we've had kind of a like a
Speaker 1: god's eye view of the whole process. All right, let's
Speaker 1: throw this bone in the into the air Joe and
Speaker 1: move on to the age of space travel. You know,
Speaker 1: one of the best things I think about the technological
Speaker 1: accuracy of the movie is that they don't have magical
Speaker 1: gravity plating on the floors. And this was standard in
Speaker 1: the science fiction of the time that you know, you
Speaker 1: have a spaceship and people just walk around in it,
Speaker 1: because why not, Oh, and it's and it's largely standard afterwards,
Speaker 1: like you'll find some pretty you you'll find some some
Speaker 1: sci fi that that's pretty serious about its science. But
Speaker 1: when it comes to gravity on the ship, they just
Speaker 1: they just go ahead and just assume there's magic gravity.
Speaker 1: It's like, ultimately easier to just go ahead and chalk
Speaker 1: that one up to magic so we can talk about
Speaker 1: other things. Um. I mean, it's one of the reasons
Speaker 1: that I really like the Expanse uh the television series,
Speaker 1: book series as well. And they don't cheat. They don't
Speaker 1: cheat on the gravity. I mean, there may be some
Speaker 1: case to be made for some level of cheating, but
Speaker 1: for the most part, they take the gravity seriously and
Speaker 1: it's a part of the plotting as well. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: so all of the artificial gravity in two thousand one
Speaker 1: Space Odyssey is created by real forces, by by rotating force.
Speaker 1: So just like we've talked about in our artificial gravity episode,
Speaker 1: you've got a space station that's a rotating wheel. This
Speaker 1: uses the angular momentum of the rotation to create a
Speaker 1: downward pressure on the floor inside the wheel where people
Speaker 1: can walk around. Uh. And even in the spaceship in
Speaker 1: the Discovery one there's like a big spherical kind of
Speaker 1: command area that has a segment of it with artificial
Speaker 1: gravity in it. Uh, that's created by rotating a sort
Speaker 1: of ring around the middle. Now, I have read some
Speaker 1: analysis that says one problem with the discovery one artificial
Speaker 1: gravity is that, given what we're looking at in the movie,
Speaker 1: it is not big enough and would have to spin
Speaker 1: too asked to create a realistic artificial gravity environment because
Speaker 1: there would be excess Coriolis forces. Yeah, I believe we
Speaker 1: went into this a little bit on our artificial gravity
Speaker 1: episode that yeah, you would. You would probably need a
Speaker 1: bigger wheel. Yeah, you probably would. So the brief refresher
Speaker 1: the Coriolis forces is basically just uh strange counterintuitive movements
Speaker 1: that happen when you're within a rotating frame of reference.
Speaker 1: So if you imagine uh, people sitting on a merry
Speaker 1: go round like horses going around, and one of them
Speaker 1: tries to throw a ball to the other one is
Speaker 1: not going to be so easy, right, because it's rotating.
Speaker 1: It's not moving in a straight line. So you try
Speaker 1: to throw a ball to somebody and you are maybe
Speaker 1: throwing the ball to where they would be if they
Speaker 1: were moving in a straight line, but they're rotating, so
Speaker 1: the ball appears to curve off path. It doesn't seem
Speaker 1: to make any sense. Before we move on, I should
Speaker 1: also point out the other big obvious um aspect of
Speaker 1: the presentation of space travel in this uh, in this movie,
Speaker 1: and that is that there is there is no sound
Speaker 1: in space. And they adhere to this in a way
Speaker 1: that virtually no other film does. Yeah, like even pretty
Speaker 1: smart film, even films and properties that will go ahead
Speaker 1: and try and be realistic with gravity. They're like, Nope,
Speaker 1: if we're having a space battle, nobody's gonna watch it
Speaker 1: unless they're explosion noises, right. Uh. But there there are
Speaker 1: noises for the astronauts, but they're internal noises. That's fantastic.
Speaker 1: Like when the astronauts go out for e v A,
Speaker 1: there is this almost deafening hiss of life support systems
Speaker 1: within their suits. And I was reading a little bit
Speaker 1: about what astronauts do actually here when they're on their spacewalks, uh,
Speaker 1: and apparently, yeah, they mainly hear their own life support systems.
Speaker 1: They hear like pumping and fans and stuff like that
Speaker 1: within their suits. But it's kind of creepy to imagine
Speaker 1: because imagine trying to do mechanical work with tools when
Speaker 1: you can't hear anything you're doing. Yeah, it's it's a
Speaker 1: it's it's a different reality than we're used to dealing with.
Speaker 1: You normally, you should be able to to hear your tool,
Speaker 1: and even if you're not, you're not consciously thinking about it.
Speaker 1: It's part of your your your sensory experience of the
Speaker 1: of of of the activity. Yeah, I mean, I imagine
Speaker 1: to be deeply unsettling to go and loosen a bolt
Speaker 1: and I just hear nothing. It's completely silent. But they
Speaker 1: have to. Astronauts on spacewalks have to do things like that.
Speaker 1: That's why you gotta have those explosive bolts joke, because
Speaker 1: just push the button and you're done. No, no sitting
Speaker 1: there cranking them around. Oh, there's some good explosive bolts
Speaker 1: in the movie too. Uh. And there was one part
Speaker 1: where I thought I caught a mistake in the movie.
Speaker 1: I thought I caught a gravity mistake where there's a
Speaker 1: scene where they're flying in a moon shuttle to a
Speaker 1: thing on the surface of the Moon. And we just
Speaker 1: did an episode about coffee and space. Heywood Floyd and
Speaker 1: his buddies. They're pouring out a caraff of coffee to
Speaker 1: pour coffee into cups, and I was like, hey, that
Speaker 1: wouldn't work. But then I realized, oh, wait a minute.
Speaker 1: Now this shuttle is presumably not actually in a zero
Speaker 1: G environment. It's flying over the surface of the Moon, right,
Speaker 1: so it would be something more like imagining be in
Speaker 1: an airplane. But then again I thought. I came back
Speaker 1: on that and I was like, well, but an airplane
Speaker 1: wouldn't work on the Moon because airplanes have to generate
Speaker 1: lift by creating a differential flow of air under the wings,
Speaker 1: you know, so you can generate forward thrust, and then
Speaker 1: there's a differential pressure of of flow of air above
Speaker 1: the wing and below the wing, or the aerofoil, whatever
Speaker 1: it is, and then that lifts the plane up. On
Speaker 1: the Moon where there's no atmosphere, you couldn't do that,
Speaker 1: So how would you even have air travel on the moon. Well,
Speaker 1: as far as the coffee aspect of this problem goes,
Speaker 1: they do. The cooper does have make the factulous choice
Speaker 1: of simply cutting away before we see coffee actually poured,
Speaker 1: So we we end up having a lengthy discussions later
Speaker 1: on about how that coffee might have worked, but the
Speaker 1: magician doesn't reveal his trick well. But there's a huge
Speaker 1: amount of attention paid in general in the movie too,
Speaker 1: allowing life to continue in microgravity or zero gravity environment food,
Speaker 1: for instance, either being stuck through the straw or scraped
Speaker 1: off of that trade that wonderfully appetizing green paste. It
Speaker 1: looks like like the worst possible store bought guacamole, a
Speaker 1: thing like the not the cool kind of guacamole we
Speaker 1: can get now, the kind of store bought guacamole that
Speaker 1: you could only either you've got in like that the nineties,
Speaker 1: I would say all the food now you're talking about
Speaker 1: the scene on the Discovery one, but that's in a
Speaker 1: simulated gravity environment. But it's still disgusting. It is disgusting. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they it looks like to me, it looks like what
Speaker 1: they're eating is different colored versions of the the I
Speaker 1: don't know whatever that stuff is on the top of
Speaker 1: a lemon bar, you know what I'm talking about, Like
Speaker 1: that just kind of gelatinous consistency stuff. It just kind
Speaker 1: of scraping it off with that with the device. It
Speaker 1: kind of looks like the thing that the Romans used
Speaker 1: to scrape their skin in the bat in the baths,
Speaker 1: except I guess it's you know, this is like corn
Speaker 1: beef flavored lemon bar. But yeah, so so you've got
Speaker 1: the space travel scenes in in the zero G space
Speaker 1: shuttles in the middle section of the movie, where they're
Speaker 1: eating and drinking out of like corn cartons. I guess
Speaker 1: liquid corn liquid carrot seems kind of gross. The the
Speaker 1: flight attendants have these grip shoes that allow them to
Speaker 1: walk around by gripping the floor. I guess it's some
Speaker 1: kind of velcro like thing. Yeah, yeah, you might have
Speaker 1: missed it in the film because they only spend like
Speaker 1: a half hour establishing this technology. But I say that
Speaker 1: it's not a not a second off. It's boring, but
Speaker 1: they do firmly establish how they're walking around. An amazing
Speaker 1: comic relief moment is the moment where Haywood Floyd is
Speaker 1: on the flight and I think he's just been sucking
Speaker 1: up some some corn carton, you know, like a corn
Speaker 1: through a straw, and then the next thing we see
Speaker 1: is him staring at the instructions for a zero gravity toilet.
Speaker 1: It says like passengers are advised to read instructions before
Speaker 1: use and then there's this massive column of text. He's
Speaker 1: like biting his knuckle. But that does also play on
Speaker 1: on some real space issues, like you've talked about before
Speaker 1: with the the emergencies of of bladder control in zero gravity.
Speaker 1: Oh certainly, Yeah, that the how the bladder doesn't fill
Speaker 1: up from top to bottom, but from all sides in
Speaker 1: and then suddenly it's the last second and you've got
Speaker 1: to go potty. Um. Yeah, A tremendous amount of research
Speaker 1: and development has gone into creating a better bathroom experience
Speaker 1: in space, and for for a great reason. I mean,
Speaker 1: this is a basic aspect of how the human body
Speaker 1: works and when you absolutely need to maintain hygienic control
Speaker 1: off in a microgravity environment. Do you know how the
Speaker 1: early space command design did not take that into account,
Speaker 1: Like in his first orbital flight, Alan Shephard, Well, actually
Speaker 1: I think not while he was in flight. I believe
Speaker 1: it was before liftoff he had to he had to
Speaker 1: pee in his space suit, and he was They did
Speaker 1: not give him any anything to deal with this. They
Speaker 1: just figured, you know, the flight would be so short
Speaker 1: that he could hold it. But then there were launched
Speaker 1: delays and so he's there in his suit for hours
Speaker 1: and hours and he's got a pee, so he just
Speaker 1: went and it shorted out some of his sensors and equipment.
Speaker 1: It's kind of an embarrassing story that they were like, Oh,
Speaker 1: we don't need to worry about that. Isn't this scene
Speaker 1: presented in the right stuff the motion picture? I don't
Speaker 1: recall it, is okay, unless that's a false memory. I
Speaker 1: seem to recall this this scene taking place. Well, if
Speaker 1: it does, apparently that's a true story. But but more
Speaker 1: about the way the movie deals with space travel, space communication,
Speaker 1: all that beyond just the toilets. Uh So, one thing
Speaker 1: that it does correctly acknowledge is the time delay between
Speaker 1: signals received and transmitted between say a ship en route
Speaker 1: to Jupiter and the Earth. Like there's a part where
Speaker 1: the astronauts on the Discovery one going to Jupiter they
Speaker 1: do an interview with the BBC and the BBC guys
Speaker 1: like we had to edit out the seven minute delays
Speaker 1: between questions and answers. But also once they actually do
Speaker 1: the interview, when you're thinking about that, it seems kind
Speaker 1: of like, what because there are parts where the interviewer
Speaker 1: asks such dumb questions if you're not going to get
Speaker 1: an answer for seven minutes. It seems like he should
Speaker 1: have been more concise. Yeah, you think you would think so. No.
Speaker 1: One thing the movie demonstrates that that I think we
Speaker 1: have not yet figured out from a scientific perspective is
Speaker 1: the idea of hibernation, human hibernation on board spacecraft. So
Speaker 1: on the Discovery one, you've got two astronauts who are
Speaker 1: awake and sort of minding the store, and then you've
Speaker 1: got a whole other crew of astronauts who are in hibernation,
Speaker 1: and it says sarcophagus looking devices. It's very creepy. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and like some of the like I think I can't
Speaker 1: remember if it's Pool or Bowman, but one of them
Speaker 1: is drawing them while they're in hybernation. And how is
Speaker 1: is commenting as that it looks very good days. It's
Speaker 1: really been working on your your skill. That's great. But
Speaker 1: they say the hibernation is like sleep. They breathe once
Speaker 1: a minute, the heart beats three times a minute, and
Speaker 1: body temperature is three degrees integrade. And as far as
Speaker 1: I know that, they don't explain in the movie really
Speaker 1: how this works. And as far as I know, this
Speaker 1: is not possible, right, I mean, certainly hibernation continues to
Speaker 1: be of of key interest to researchers for a number
Speaker 1: of reasons. I should have said not possible yet, right, yes,
Speaker 1: but but it's one of the reasons that we keep
Speaker 1: looking at hibernation, hibernation in actual organisms because I mean,
Speaker 1: there are a number of different health potential health benefits there,
Speaker 1: but also the ability to use this for long term
Speaker 1: space travel is is very attractive. Now. The explanation in
Speaker 1: two thousand one is that it's not so much of
Speaker 1: a spacist situation, so they're not traveling between stars or anything,
Speaker 1: but rather it's about raining in consumption of air, water,
Speaker 1: and food for the travel portion of the mission. So yeah,
Speaker 1: you don't need the doctor until you get there, or
Speaker 1: you know, an astrophysicists or whatever the specialists are. You
Speaker 1: don't need them on the way. So why feed them
Speaker 1: and water them and give them, uh, the finite portions
Speaker 1: of the atmosphere rations until you get there? Right? And
Speaker 1: hibernation would seem to be the biological process to look
Speaker 1: to here, because I mean it's uh, we've seen examples
Speaker 1: of in true hibernators of greatly decreased metabolic activity, ability
Speaker 1: to withstand extreme cold and uh, and resistance to muscle
Speaker 1: atrophy while they're under uh. That's that's one of the
Speaker 1: amazing things about like any hybernating species. But if you're
Speaker 1: gonna look at something even it's like a hibernation light
Speaker 1: arguably like like various bears, the fact that they can
Speaker 1: essentially be a mobile for such a long period of
Speaker 1: time and get out and all their muscles still work.
Speaker 1: You know, it's it's it's amazing. Well human perspective, muscle
Speaker 1: atrophy is a problem even from the point of view
Speaker 1: of active astronauts and nunberduced gravity. I mean, if you're
Speaker 1: on the space station, you've got to exercise vigorously uh
Speaker 1: to try to maintain some of your your bone density
Speaker 1: and muscle strength because what you don't have a floor
Speaker 1: to push against. Yeah. Now, one thing I sort of
Speaker 1: take issue with, and again this I'm I'm not nitpicking
Speaker 1: here too much, but it's said that the hibernation is
Speaker 1: like sleep. But I've read accounts that sleep the sleep
Speaker 1: light aspects here might not match up with with reality
Speaker 1: all that much. I've seen the hibernation of Arctic ground
Speaker 1: squirrels compared to a kind of awful insomnia where the
Speaker 1: where the creatures actually have to extend a fair amount
Speaker 1: of energy to heat back up so that they can sleep.
Speaker 1: That sleep is perhaps something that is um, it's not
Speaker 1: possible why you're truly hibernating, which which which is fascinating
Speaker 1: to think about. So it also does remind me of
Speaker 1: of another science fiction work of Orson Scott card Is
Speaker 1: Um he had he had an older novel titled Hot Sleep,
Speaker 1: and the idea here was that that suspended animation was
Speaker 1: kind of like an awful boiling insomnia. It was that
Speaker 1: one experienced while they were in transit to another place.
Speaker 1: Sounds bad, but I always think of that when I
Speaker 1: read about this idea that hibernation is not sleep, it
Speaker 1: maybe more like hot sleep. Now we're back to the jaunt. Yes, yeah,
Speaker 1: there's uh, that's another one. I feel like Stephen King's
Speaker 1: The John might not have been possible without two thousand
Speaker 1: and one. Yeah, I wonder. But well, speaking of sleep,
Speaker 1: there's another thing that I thought was worth mentioning maybe
Speaker 1: is there's a scene on The Discovery One where it
Speaker 1: appears that the astronaut Frank Pool is I could be
Speaker 1: mistaking what's going on in the scene, but he appears
Speaker 1: to be doing some kind of light bathing, like he's
Speaker 1: in his underwear and he's laying on a slab under
Speaker 1: a bunch of lights um And you know, I wondered,
Speaker 1: is that supposed to be what's going on there? And
Speaker 1: it would make sense because light regimes matter to astronauts.
Speaker 1: What kind of light you're exposed to does have an
Speaker 1: effect on your body, on your circadian rhythms, on everything.
Speaker 1: I mean, I've read about reports of astronauts sometimes having
Speaker 1: trouble sleeping on space stations, and the different kinds of
Speaker 1: light and exposure to different kinds of light at different
Speaker 1: times could help alleviate that problem. Like if you're exposed
Speaker 1: to a fluorescent light that's putting out blue frequencies, this
Speaker 1: could lead to trouble getting to sleep, and you might
Speaker 1: need to turn on an led some kind of different
Speaker 1: kind of light if you want to maintain your daily
Speaker 1: cycles correctly. Yeah, I like the circadian rhythm interpretation of
Speaker 1: that scene. Otherwise he's just bored and decided to strip
Speaker 1: down and hang out, you know, totally unrelated to what
Speaker 1: we're just saying. Well, actually, no sort of related to
Speaker 1: sleeping in space. One thing I love it predicts is
Speaker 1: that there are hotel chains on the space station. So
Speaker 1: I love heywood Floyd gets up to the space station
Speaker 1: on the ring module, you know, with the artificial gravity,
Speaker 1: and he's walking around and we see like a Howard
Speaker 1: Johnson's and a Hilton. It's such a that whole station.
Speaker 1: It's just so stylish. Just I just I just want
Speaker 1: to be there. Yeah. And if I was there, I
Speaker 1: could just check into the hotel and it'd be good
Speaker 1: to go. Well, I don't necessarily think that's all that implausible.
Speaker 1: I mean I wonder about commercial hotel chains getting into someday,
Speaker 1: uh space stations. I mean, we've already seen at least
Speaker 1: I can think of at least one company the working
Speaker 1: on space station habitats, like a big Low Aerospace which
Speaker 1: has been working on orbital habitats. I think the guy
Speaker 1: behind that company was like a like a hotel or
Speaker 1: motel chain guy. Yeah. I think we will get to
Speaker 1: the point where there will be there will be orbital hotels. Now,
Speaker 1: will they have bed bugs? I don't know, it depends
Speaker 1: what will the will you know, cosmic radiation and occasional
Speaker 1: solar radiation swells due to those bed bugs. Maybe they'll
Speaker 1: become the giant mutants rampaging through the the the orbital wheels.
Speaker 1: The answer is yes. But what is a space holiday
Speaker 1: in without some mutants? That's true, I would hope that.
Speaker 1: I mean, we're basically doing all the legwork here for
Speaker 1: future sci fi riders taking note. Yeah, helliday in in space,
Speaker 1: that'll be. That'll be the franchise. All right, Should we
Speaker 1: take another break and then come back talk a little
Speaker 1: bit about how an Ai And that's right, we should
Speaker 1: all right, we're gonna We're gonna be right back. Alright,
Speaker 1: we're back. So before we get into talking about how
Speaker 1: I do need to point out that we do see
Speaker 1: some scenes where it looks like the the the crew
Speaker 1: members the Discovery are using iPads. They have these wonderful
Speaker 1: flat screen devices, and that's just one of those those
Speaker 1: moments where you're like, oh man, this film totally got
Speaker 1: it right. I mean, they missed iPads. Uh, you know,
Speaker 1: they were a little early on the on the prediction,
Speaker 1: but there it is. So maybe everything else in the film,
Speaker 1: it's just a matter of time. Like most other things, though,
Speaker 1: I think they did not correctly predict miniaturization. So everything
Speaker 1: is very big. So obviously, as we were talking about earlier,
Speaker 1: one of the huge themes dealt with in this movie
Speaker 1: is the concept of artificial intelligence, especially if you consider
Speaker 1: it a story about intelligence itself, you know, biological intelligence
Speaker 1: and then machine intelligence. This is this is one of
Speaker 1: the key features of the story. And as we said before,
Speaker 1: How nine thousand, the computer is somehow the most interesting
Speaker 1: character in the movie, Like, it has much more interest
Speaker 1: things to say than the people do. Yeah, and I
Speaker 1: feel far more for him when he essentially dies than
Speaker 1: the actual human characters who die only one of whom
Speaker 1: we get to know at all and then very barely.
Speaker 1: And I've probably feel more about how is death than
Speaker 1: I do about you know, the nameless nameless eight that's
Speaker 1: beaten to death. You know, I wonder if exactly what
Speaker 1: you're feeling their empathy for a computer more so than
Speaker 1: your felly human being is uh. I have to wonder
Speaker 1: if maybe that's intentional to and supposed to make us
Speaker 1: a little worried. Well, like I said earlier, we do
Speaker 1: not even see that one human death. We see the
Speaker 1: the how controlled e V a pod moving towards him,
Speaker 1: and then the next shot is are the are the
Speaker 1: pod and the human that the corpse just tumbling through
Speaker 1: the void. Well, I mean even the characters say in
Speaker 1: the movie Pool, the character who gets killed by how
Speaker 1: says at one point in this BBC interview from the spacecraft,
Speaker 1: he says, he's just like a six member of the crew.
Speaker 1: You very quickly get adjusted to the idea that he talks,
Speaker 1: and you think of him really just as another person.
Speaker 1: And I think that that is in a sense quite literal,
Speaker 1: that there is this risk that we think of machines
Speaker 1: as people, and research is born that out. I mean,
Speaker 1: there have been tests that if a machine talks, if
Speaker 1: it uses language, if it uses social conventions, do people
Speaker 1: start to treat it like a person. And I haven't
Speaker 1: read this research in a while, but last time I
Speaker 1: checked in on it, I mean it seemed like the
Speaker 1: consensus was, yes, we very easily, quite readily start attributing
Speaker 1: human characteristics to inanimate objects if they just talk and
Speaker 1: stuff like that, If they they look like an animal
Speaker 1: or a person, smiley face on it, yeah, and you
Speaker 1: begin to feel bad if somebody gives it a kick, Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's a person, Noel, I mean, think about uh, if
Speaker 1: you ever watched those Boston Dynamics videos where there are
Speaker 1: these four legged robots that walk around in the parking
Speaker 1: lot and stuff, and somebody coming by kicking. Yeah, somebody
Speaker 1: kicks it to see if it can keep its balance,
Speaker 1: because they're they're testing its locomotor capabilities, like can it
Speaker 1: stay on its feet if somebody tries to throw it off?
Speaker 1: But when I see that, I'm like, what a mean person?
Speaker 1: How could you kick that animal like that? And it's
Speaker 1: a robot. This is a huge blind spot for the
Speaker 1: human mind. And it could be that they were anticipating
Speaker 1: this kind of research, I mean before it was really
Speaker 1: even out that that Kubrick and Clarke may have been
Speaker 1: trying to make a point that like, we very easily,
Speaker 1: uh fall victim to thinking of machines as people if
Speaker 1: they even resemble people in the barest sense, such as
Speaker 1: speaking like a human, or or seeming to think like
Speaker 1: a human, or just having that one focal point, that
Speaker 1: red light that seems to be an eye, yeah, just
Speaker 1: giving it the eye. If it didn't have the red
Speaker 1: light and just talked, I wonder how if we would
Speaker 1: feel the same way. Another thing about how that that's
Speaker 1: kind of disturbing is that how describes itself himself. However
Speaker 1: you characterize, I don't know. I think he sort of
Speaker 1: presents himself as male gendered. I guess how says that
Speaker 1: he is quote by any practical definition of the words
Speaker 1: fool proof and incapable of error. That seems like a
Speaker 1: bad impression to give an AI. You know, you shouldn't
Speaker 1: teach him to think that way. When people think that way,
Speaker 1: or express themselves that way, or tweet that way, we
Speaker 1: we instantly say there's something wrong with that person. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I mean you would think that any good computer program,
Speaker 1: especially one is complex and difficult to understand as a
Speaker 1: conversational AI module, should have debugging features like it should
Speaker 1: be aware of the fact that it can malfunction, and
Speaker 1: should have built in processes for rooting out malfunction and
Speaker 1: fixing it. Yes, um, I mean. The only other scenario
Speaker 1: I can think of is that if it is important,
Speaker 1: as it is on this discovery message, where it's in
Speaker 1: charge of looking after everyone's life, then perhaps it is
Speaker 1: advantageous to lean into sort of the godlike qualities of
Speaker 1: how that how, of course how didn mistakes because of
Speaker 1: how it makes a mistake, then we're all dead. But
Speaker 1: I think Hal is actually a very good early vision
Speaker 1: of AI. I mean that this again, this was back
Speaker 1: in the sixties and computers were not like they are today.
Speaker 1: It might have been harder to imagine they would ever
Speaker 1: get there. But there's a lot that's smart about the
Speaker 1: way How is characterized as an AI that goes an
Speaker 1: AI that goes off the rails and becomes murderous because
Speaker 1: they don't go the terminator direction. It's like, you know, oh,
Speaker 1: I've got to I've got to eliminate humanity. HOW is
Speaker 1: just trying to do its job. But we're also and
Speaker 1: we're also not privy to like all the read like
Speaker 1: How didn't set there and saying, look, yeah, I killed him,
Speaker 1: but this is why I killed him, This is why
Speaker 1: I killed all these these individuals as well. Like it's
Speaker 1: it's left for us to try and guess at what
Speaker 1: the what the what the full you know, rationale there
Speaker 1: is in the computers thinking or at least and that's
Speaker 1: the thing that's explored more in the book. But but
Speaker 1: but I love how it isn't in the film because
Speaker 1: there is this this sense it was like we can
Speaker 1: we can try and imagine what it is, what is
Speaker 1: going on? In how's mind. But then ultimately, to what
Speaker 1: extent does that match up with the computer process that's
Speaker 1: taking place the actual compute. Well, this is a great question,
Speaker 1: the question of AI psychology, because normally, in order to
Speaker 1: understand a computer program, what you would do is you'd
Speaker 1: want to go and look at its code and see
Speaker 1: what its code is doing. But obviously a program as
Speaker 1: complex as a conversational artificial intelligence is not. You can't
Speaker 1: really analyze it that way, right because it's probably been
Speaker 1: I mean, I don't know if they knew this at
Speaker 1: the time, but based on the way that we train
Speaker 1: machines like this today, they go through like machine learning,
Speaker 1: through say like deep neural networks, which produce rules that
Speaker 1: generate outcomes that match the outcomes you try to train
Speaker 1: them toward. But eventually these the rules they generate are
Speaker 1: kind of opaque to us, like it's hard for us
Speaker 1: to understand why they're doing what they're doing. They can
Speaker 1: train themselves to produce the kind of output we want,
Speaker 1: but you know, they're sort of a black box to us,
Speaker 1: just like other minds are in a way, like you
Speaker 1: can't see inside somebody else's mind and understand what's happening.
Speaker 1: You can only judge by their external behavior, and so
Speaker 1: we have processes like psychology where we try to understand
Speaker 1: people's motivations. And at some point you've got to wonder
Speaker 1: if the best way of understanding and artificial intelligence will
Speaker 1: not be through looking at its code and what it's doing,
Speaker 1: because it's just too complex for us to understand and
Speaker 1: we don't get what the rules are. Instead, you'll have
Speaker 1: to make inferences based on machine psychology. I'm sure there
Speaker 1: are some wonderful examples of this. I'm gonna put this
Speaker 1: out to our sci fi readers out there, but I
Speaker 1: wonder has there been is there? Are there? Are there
Speaker 1: fictional like AI psychologists that pop up in sci fi? Oh? Absolutely?
Speaker 1: Uh in I robot? Oh of course, how could I
Speaker 1: forget all of them, all of them robots. What's her name,
Speaker 1: Susan Calvin? Is that right? I think she's a robot psychologist? Yes,
Speaker 1: I remember I read all of these when I was
Speaker 1: in junior high and I was was one of these
Speaker 1: times where like now, I don't do this, but at
Speaker 1: the time I always would make a distinctive choice in
Speaker 1: which actor I was casting as uh as a given part,
Speaker 1: and so I always chose to cast her as Sigourney Weavers,
Speaker 1: so oh yeah, that's a good one. Yeah. I mean
Speaker 1: it also shows my limitations of of casting out uh
Speaker 1: stories in your mind when you've only seen, you know,
Speaker 1: so many different sci fi films as a kid. Well,
Speaker 1: I think she would make a great doctor Susan Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: but yeah it is Susan Calvin, that's her name. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and she's a robot psychologist. So no, this has absolutely
Speaker 1: been explored in science fiction before. I mean, I wonder,
Speaker 1: I'm wondering if this will literally be at some point
Speaker 1: the best way we have of understanding what an AI
Speaker 1: is doing, because it'll be too complex and too opaque
Speaker 1: to try to understand it a mechanistic level. We have
Speaker 1: to understand it like get the get the gestalt in
Speaker 1: the same way that a psychologist would from interviewing a person. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So I guess what I'm trying to imagine here and
Speaker 1: again this is or have something that does exist in
Speaker 1: a sci fi story somewhere. Would you have a situation
Speaker 1: where you have a lengthy space flight and you have
Speaker 1: on one hand the AI that is managing the people
Speaker 1: and looking for psychosis or any other kind of mental
Speaker 1: problems in the humans. But then you also have to
Speaker 1: have a human or a portion of the human population
Speaker 1: whose whole job is to just watch the AI and
Speaker 1: make sure the i AI isn't my malfunctioning, And so
Speaker 1: you end up having to have this careful balance of
Speaker 1: both sides looking for signs of essentially mental illness. Well, yeah,
Speaker 1: you you can imagine a kind of like a talk
Speaker 1: therapy regime for an AI, just to make sure that
Speaker 1: it's emotionally stable, that it's you know, that it's experiencing
Speaker 1: mental health, to recognize signs and symptoms of I don't
Speaker 1: know what you would call it in AI, but the
Speaker 1: AI equivalent of delusion or hallucinations or anything else that
Speaker 1: could be worrying. Quick fun fact here, it's it's mentioned
Speaker 1: in the film that how became operational in Okay, which
Speaker 1: which I love that because that that makes everything even
Speaker 1: feel feel even more um like. That's the date that
Speaker 1: makes me sad as opposed to two thousand one. Cinematically,
Speaker 1: nine two, I would say is the first year of
Speaker 1: the nineteen nineties, because in a in a cinematic time scale,
Speaker 1: nineteen nine we're still the eighties. Yeah, and ninety two
Speaker 1: I was looking this up. Sort of a terrible year
Speaker 1: in actual science fiction, as it gave us such let's say,
Speaker 1: challenging to love films as Alien three, and Alien three
Speaker 1: is the best film I'm gonna list here because it
Speaker 1: also this is also the year that gave us Universal Soldier,
Speaker 1: Free Jack, the lawnmower Man, Memoirs of an Invisible Man.
Speaker 1: Haven't seen it, John Carpenter joint. It's not a good one. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I enjoyed it at the time, but I was like
Speaker 1: a child. Uh. And then a solar crisis. I don't
Speaker 1: know it. Oh, very problematic production history. Also split second,
Speaker 1: don't know this one second it's a ba Rugger Howard
Speaker 1: running round in sewers with monsters. It's actually it's kind
Speaker 1: I'm on board, yeah, but put me in that sewer.
Speaker 1: There were no certainly no contenders for the crown of
Speaker 1: two thousand one of Space Odyssey in but speaking of
Speaker 1: Alien three, I mean, I would say Alien is another
Speaker 1: franchise where you do absolutely see echoes of two thousand
Speaker 1: Space Odyssey, you see, I mean, it's a very different
Speaker 1: kind of story, but you absolutely see the legacy of
Speaker 1: the way it changed our vision of space travel and
Speaker 1: space exploration and UH and kind of the deep, the
Speaker 1: mystery of of the world beyond to one more question
Speaker 1: about how How claims to be conscious? Do you believe him? Robert?
Speaker 1: Is he conscious? I? In watching the film, I was
Speaker 1: definitely thinking about this. Uh when I when How brought
Speaker 1: it up? Uh? You know, in a large part due
Speaker 1: to our recent topics about consciousness. I keep coming back
Speaker 1: to the eye, the eye of How. You know, we
Speaker 1: spent a lot of times zooming in on it. Uh.
Speaker 1: There's an implied focus of attention there is How is
Speaker 1: watching things, observing things, watching the Uh. The two crew
Speaker 1: members uh speak, reading their lips as they're essentially plotting
Speaker 1: against him. How has enormous computing power obviously, but does
Speaker 1: seem capable of focus, focusing his attention on given problems,
Speaker 1: people in situations. So if you lean towards an explanation
Speaker 1: of of human consciousness that is more about focused attention
Speaker 1: attention schema theory, and you know the use of limited
Speaker 1: cognitive um mechanisms to to to tackle any given problem
Speaker 1: or scenario, then then I buy the idea that How
Speaker 1: is conscious. Well, I don't know, I mean, I don't
Speaker 1: know if it's he's conscious by necessity or by design,
Speaker 1: if you're looking at it in this lide though, I
Speaker 1: very much am persuaded by the idea that consciousness has
Speaker 1: something deep to do with attention, uh, from a from
Speaker 1: a brain structure standpoint. But at the same time, I
Speaker 1: don't know if focus and attention is enough for consciousness,
Speaker 1: because you can imagine just making an automated security camera
Speaker 1: that tracks things, so you wouldn't assume that that thing
Speaker 1: was conscious. So it seems very true to me that
Speaker 1: consciousness in humans definitely has something strong to do with attention,
Speaker 1: But I don't know if just the ability to focus
Speaker 1: and give attention to things creates consciousness. It's true now,
Speaker 1: but then you know another thing that comes up in
Speaker 1: all of this. It's just the question. I believe this
Speaker 1: is the question that I I asked Max tech mark
Speaker 1: in in my interview with him from previous episode. Uh,
Speaker 1: is it possible? Would you would you be able to
Speaker 1: have a super intelligent machine? Would you be able to
Speaker 1: have a how nine thousand that wasn't conscious or his
Speaker 1: consciousness essential to the too to its function? That's a
Speaker 1: great question. Obviously that's not something we know the answer to,
Speaker 1: but it's it's interesting to wonder if, yeah, if there
Speaker 1: could be such a thing as great intelligence without consciousness.
Speaker 1: Is How quote unquote conscious because How has to be
Speaker 1: conscious to do what he does? Or is it all
Speaker 1: about making the humans comfortable, giving the humans something that
Speaker 1: they can relate to and have a conversation with. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So it would be a great irony if the designers
Speaker 1: of How made him act like he is conscious to
Speaker 1: make the crew members more comfortable around him, make him
Speaker 1: seem more like a person that they can get along with.
Speaker 1: But in fact, the irony is that when David Bowman
Speaker 1: has to go kill How, How begs for his life
Speaker 1: because he simulates consciousness. He says, I'm afraid that's such
Speaker 1: a heartbreaking moment because he says that towards the very end. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and he says it over and over again. Yeah, And
Speaker 1: it kind of makes me hate David Bowman a little bit, Like,
Speaker 1: I know, I know How dis killed about people, but
Speaker 1: I'm still kind of like, Ah, Bowman, you have no
Speaker 1: chill where you're You're falling for those sli machine appeals
Speaker 1: that they're getting under your skin. They were they were
Speaker 1: I mean, in many ways, How is like a child,
Speaker 1: and you know, he's he's a very he's a different
Speaker 1: type of child. He has a capable there's a calmness
Speaker 1: and a reason to him that you generally did not
Speaker 1: find in Ail that is far more emotional. But but yeah,
Speaker 1: there's the there is this childlike element. So it's like
Speaker 1: Bowman is killing a child, especially towards the end when
Speaker 1: he is he's singing Daisy. Yeah, he's singing a song.
Speaker 1: It's uh, it's it's incredibly unerving. Uh. And that scene
Speaker 1: is mostly remembered when people make jokes about it, now,
Speaker 1: like that's the primary context in which that scene comes up.
Speaker 1: But if you watch it in the context of the movie,
Speaker 1: it is a deeply disturbing, weird, uh surreal scene. It
Speaker 1: kind of makes it takes you out of your body
Speaker 1: in a way. Yeah, alright, so we're beginning to run
Speaker 1: out of time here. We should probably talk if you
Speaker 1: should probably talk about those aliens that Oh yeah, there's
Speaker 1: any kind of the entire movement of the plot. So
Speaker 1: of course there's the huge question of of what is
Speaker 1: happening at the end of the movie after David Bowman
Speaker 1: goes through the stargate. Uh, and he's in that room
Speaker 1: with the weird, you know, neo classical furniture and the
Speaker 1: paintings and he and he turns into the Star Child.
Speaker 1: What is happening there? Uh? On one hand, I can
Speaker 1: definitely see that the creators try to resist explaining literally
Speaker 1: what's happening there. It might be that they don't have
Speaker 1: a literal answer. There is one audio clip that is
Speaker 1: supposedly of Kubrick, but I think it's unconfirmed whether it's
Speaker 1: Kubrick or not. But it's been alleged, well it was.
Speaker 1: I think it was a recording supposedly made by a
Speaker 1: filmmaker who was doing a documentary and interviewed and and
Speaker 1: claimed to have interviewed Kubrick, and was released many years later.
Speaker 1: But if this clip of Cooper talking is actually genuine,
Speaker 1: he explains, you know, he says, like I've been resistant
Speaker 1: to explaining the ending, but if you must know, basically
Speaker 1: what's happening is that Bowman has been put into a
Speaker 1: kind of cosmic zoo. Uh. It is a place where
Speaker 1: he can be observed by these creatures from you know,
Speaker 1: galactic civilization, and the zoo is it has this sort
Speaker 1: of like inaccurate historical furniture. They've tried to create an
Speaker 1: environment that he would think was pretty like mulating his
Speaker 1: natural environment. So they have this like French you know,
Speaker 1: kind of furniture and stuff like that, and uh, and
Speaker 1: it's kind of in the same way that like a
Speaker 1: human zoo might put a tiger in a cage with
Speaker 1: something kind of roughly approximating its natural environment, but not
Speaker 1: in a very not in a very accurate way. I like,
Speaker 1: I like this explanation. I mean, of course, it inevitably
Speaker 1: reminds me of Billy Pilgrim and slaughter House five. Very
Speaker 1: different type of zoo, very different, very different story entirely,
Speaker 1: but but ultimately the same scenario. Let's just put him
Speaker 1: in here and uh watch him go. And then of course,
Speaker 1: the the alleged Kubrick in this recording says that after
Speaker 1: they're sort of finished with him, after after they've finished
Speaker 1: observing him, they transform him into some kind of god,
Speaker 1: into some kind of super being and send him back
Speaker 1: to Earth. Uh, and that that he you know that
Speaker 1: Kuber says, this is something that happens in a lot
Speaker 1: of myths, which is very true. You know, like the
Speaker 1: human gets the apotheosis kind of near of the human
Speaker 1: gets transformed into a star. Heavenly being or God or
Speaker 1: demi God, and look at what they can do now. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And I know that this idea is more born out
Speaker 1: in the literature and in Clark's writings, But at the
Speaker 1: same time, I I can't watch the final portions of
Speaker 1: the film without thinking of it and contemplating it more
Speaker 1: as a almost kind of a Riddle of the Sphinx
Speaker 1: kind of moment, like having this encounter with this deadly
Speaker 1: potentially deadly at least powerful uh in human force, and
Speaker 1: in doing so you are contemplating You're just forced to
Speaker 1: contemplate the nature of man because there is this sense
Speaker 1: of it is kind of like the real l of
Speaker 1: the Sphinx, where you're seeing Bowman progressively age and go
Speaker 1: through at least the remaining phases of human existence and
Speaker 1: then well and then if you count the baby and
Speaker 1: kind of coming back around to the first model. Well,
Speaker 1: I like. So the model of change that I like
Speaker 1: in that scene is sort of similar to what we
Speaker 1: were talking about with Bert's interpretation of what happens with
Speaker 1: the monolith and the ape like creatures. So the ape
Speaker 1: like creatures see the monolith and it's not even necessarily
Speaker 1: that it does something to their brains physically to change
Speaker 1: them into smarter organisms or something. Is just seeing. It's
Speaker 1: just the inspiration, the experience of what that shape is
Speaker 1: like that inspires them to pick up the bone. I
Speaker 1: like that interpretation. And so what if at the end
Speaker 1: it's it's you know that to the millionth power, it's
Speaker 1: that David Bowman has seen such things. He's been He's
Speaker 1: experienced such a different reality than he thought was possible
Speaker 1: in the presence of these aliens with all their technological power,
Speaker 1: that he is in a sense transformed the same way
Speaker 1: that the ape like creatures are transformed, but just by
Speaker 1: what they've seen. Yeah, I mean he probably saw colors
Speaker 1: that don't exist in the real world world for like
Speaker 1: a thousand years there in that segment. So yeah, I
Speaker 1: like that in interpretation as well. But there is a
Speaker 1: sense of information. I mean, obviously he does become something else,
Speaker 1: sort the thing that was Bowman becomes this new entity. Uh.
Speaker 1: In a sense when he comes back and looks over
Speaker 1: the earth, what is that? Is he there in a
Speaker 1: benevolent way, in a malevolent way? What's he going to do?
Speaker 1: I think that was this kind of a great riddle
Speaker 1: to uh. To close out the episode on like what
Speaker 1: what is he going to do? What? What is the
Speaker 1: what is this next phase and human evolution going to produce?
Speaker 1: You know, what will the the higher human form be?
Speaker 1: Like what will it be? Uh? Would be as dangerous
Speaker 1: and self destructive? Is what we have now? Or you know,
Speaker 1: in which case the Bowman starchild is is a destroyer
Speaker 1: returning to his birth world? Or is human Is humanity
Speaker 1: going to become something nobler, in which case he is
Speaker 1: returning as a savior. Or is it going to transcend
Speaker 1: our physical forms altogether? Is our future a future of
Speaker 1: information alone? Do we become intelligence in some way rather
Speaker 1: than becoming a biological species? These are all great questions
Speaker 1: And one of the great things about two thousand one
Speaker 1: what makes it a great movie is that it forces
Speaker 1: us to ask these kinds of questions. Yeah. Absolutely, So
Speaker 1: it's one for the ages man. All right. As we
Speaker 1: close up, I will say, Uh, there was a little
Speaker 1: bit I wanted to discuss about the idea of an
Speaker 1: alien civilization storing a monolith on the other side of
Speaker 1: the moon, but I think we talked about it a
Speaker 1: little bit in our Ancient Aliens episode. Uh, there there
Speaker 1: was some some some earlier writings from K Carl Sagan
Speaker 1: where he actually referenced um Um Clark and said, oh, well,
Speaker 1: this is actually a pretty good idea of how an
Speaker 1: alien civilization might have left a sentinel for us to
Speaker 1: encounter should we reach a certain level of technological advancement. Unfortunately,
Speaker 1: we have come across no such artifacts. No, we have not,
Speaker 1: but we do have two thousand and one, which is
Speaker 1: a really good movie. This is the kind of thing
Speaker 1: we might want to leave on the dark side of
Speaker 1: of of of a lunar body for another civiphlization to discover.
Speaker 1: All right, So, if you want to listen to more
Speaker 1: episodes of Stuff to Blow your Mind, head on over
Speaker 1: to stuff to Blow your Mind dot com. That's where
Speaker 1: we'll find all of the episodes, including that Ancient Aliens
Speaker 1: episode that we mentioned there, uh and all these episodes
Speaker 1: that have dealt with consciousness, AI, space travel, micro gravity,
Speaker 1: you name it. Uh. And you also find links out
Speaker 1: there very social media accounts such as Facebook and Twitter
Speaker 1: and Instagram. And as always, if you want to support
Speaker 1: the show, the best thing you can do is rate
Speaker 1: and review us wherever you have the ability to do so.
Speaker 1: Huge thanks as always to our wonderful audio producers, Alex
Speaker 1: Williams and Tarry Harrison. If you want to get in
Speaker 1: touch with us directly with feedback about this episode or
Speaker 1: any other, with the suggestions for a future topic, or
Speaker 1: just to say hi, let us know where you listen from,
Speaker 1: you can email us at blow the Mind at how
Speaker 1: stuff works dot com for more on this and thousands
Speaker 1: of other topics. Is it how stuff works dot com?
Speaker 1: They f